LOS ANGELES -- Lawyers for Marvin Pancoast claim police either botched their murder investigation or that a government cover-up prevented detectives from finding the baseball bat killer of model Vicki Morgan.
'If it's not an inept police investigation, then it's a deliberate cover-up,' defense attorney Charles Mathews said Thursday.
Mathews rested his case and then met with reporters outside the courtroom.
If police had made a thorough investigation, he claimed they would have discovered Pancoast did not kill Miss Morgan, the former mistress of the late Alfred Bloomingdale, the department store heir and confidant of President Reagan.
The first-degree murder trial in Superior Court was recessed until July 2, when prosecutors may call rebuttal witnesses.
Mathews said Gordon Basichis, who was ghostwriting Miss Morgan's autobiograhy and having an affair with her, was not questioned by police until months after the July 7, 1983, murder.
The lawyer said Basichis lied when he testified he had only six interview tapes with Miss Morgan when other evidence pointed to the existence of at least 100 tapes.
Mathews said Basichis likely sold the missing tapes 'to the highest bidder.
'There are all kinds of people who didn't know what she'd say on those tapes and who would buy them -- someone who didn't want them published, like (presidential adviser) Ed Meese, or someone who did, like (Hustler magazine publisher) Larry Flynt -- someone who might say, 'Here, Gordon, we'll give you money, drugs and keep the cops off your back.''
Prosecutor Stanley Weisberg predicted the jury would convict Pancoast, 34, a former talent agency clerk with a history of psychiatric problems who confessed the killing to police.
'The defense raised a lot of phony matters that had nothing to do with the case or with the guilt or innocence of Marvin Pancoast,' Weisberg said.
William Welsh, a detective who investigated the murder testified Thursday he never listened to or watched any of the audio and video recordings found in Miss Morgan's North Hollywood condominium.
He said he found audio cassettes in a downstairs closet and videotapes in a television cabinet in the master bedroom the morning after she was killed.
Welsh said he never listened to or viewed them because Miss Morgan's lawyer, Michael Dave, told him they were irrelevant to the homicide investigation.
Mathews has claimed the tapes recorded explicit sexual encounters between Miss Morgan, Bloomingdale and high-ranking Reagan administration officials and that she planned to use the tapes for blackmail, a motive for her death.
The existence of the sex tapes has never been proven.
