LOS ANGELES -- The mother of Vicki Morgan, slain mistress to late presidential confidant Alfred Bloomingdale, testified Tuesday she saw 'the other side' of the accused killer the day before her daughter was beaten to death with a baseball bat.
Connie Laney, testifiying for the second day in Marvin Pancoast's murder trial, was asked by defense attorney Arthur Barens if Pancoast had ever hit or threatened her daughter.
'Marvin and Vicki were very good friends,' Mrs. Laney testified.
'However, the day previous to this (the killing) I saw the other side of him. He was a different person. He was so sick and tired of her.'
Pancoast, who shared a condominium with Miss Morgan, is charged with bludgeoning her to death on July 7, 1983.
On Monday, Mrs. Laney described how Pancoast intimated the night before the killing he was tired of living with Miss Morgan.
Miss Morgan gained notoriety in 1982 when she filed a multimillion dollar palimony suit against Bloomingdale, who died of cancer in August 1982. A judge later dismissed most of the suit, describing Miss Morgan as a well-paid prostitute..
'He sounded very aggravated, very annoyed,' Mrs. Laney testified. 'I'd never seen him like that before. And he was crying.
'I said, 'Marvin, 'Why don't you go home?'
'And he said, 'No. I'm not going home. I'm taking care of this tonight, once and for all.''
Mrs. Laney said she and Pancoast picked up Miss Morgan's teenage son, Todd, in West Hollywood later that day, and said Todd's baseball bat was lying on the back shelf of Pancoast's car.
That evening, Mrs. Laney said, she heard Pancoast ask her daughter to go to his grandmother's home to get some money.
She said Miss Morgan said she'd rather go the next day and Pancoast told her, 'You'll never be up to go in the morning.'
Mrs. Laney also said Pancoastshowed her a suicide note Miss Morgan had written.
'I said, 'What's the big deal Marvin?'' she testified. 'And he said, 'You can tell she doesn't want to live.''
Barens told reporters outside court Monday that a central issue in his case will be so-called sex tapes that purportedly show Miss Morgan at orgies with top government officials. Barens said he can prove the existence of the tapes but refused to say if he could or would produce them.
'I have witnesses that will talk about the tapes and then the only issue is, are those witnesses credible?' he said.
In opening statements Monday, prosecutor Stanley Weisberg said Pancoast, 34, described in detail in several police confessions how he killed Miss Morgan several hours after his conversations with her mother.
Pancoast, a former talent agency clerk with a history of psychiatric problems, has pleaded innocent and innocent by reason of insanity to the first-degree murder charges.
