LOS ANGELES -- Jurors deciding the fate of Marvin Pancoast, the accused baseball bat killer of playgirl Vicki Morgan, told jurors Tuesday they were being asked to decide 'a simple case with simple facts.'
Prosecutor Stanley Weisberg called on the jury to use 'good common sense' in deciding Pancoast's guilt or innocence, placing particular emphasis on the defendant's confession. Deliberations begin Thursday.
'This is a simple case with simple facts, and the facts have not changed since that morning when Marvin Pancoast walked into the North Hollywood police station and confessed,' Weisberg said in his summation.
Weisberg reminded the 10-woman, two-man panel that Pancoast walked into the police station at 3:20 a.m. July 7, 1983, and told officers he had just killed the former mistress to the late presidential confidant Alfred Bloomingdale.
The prosecutor recalled police testimony quoting Pancoast as saying, 'I just killed someone. I killed her with a baseball bat.' Pancoast then directed officers to the murder scene and warned them, 'Look out for the doberman.'
Police found Miss Morgan beaten to death, her skull crushed. The bloodied baseball bat lay across her body.
Two hours later, Pancoast made a taped confession to detectives and complained of being a 'slave boy and lackey' for Miss Morgan, who shared the North Hollywood condominium with the defendant.
'This is the confession of the man last seen alone with Vicki Morgan,' Weisberg said. 'This is the confession of the man last seen with Vicki Morgan's son's baseball bat.
'This taped confession is a very important piece of evidence. It is not a videotape or a videocassette.'
The comment was in apparent reference to sextapes the defense maintains was the motive for the slaying. The existence of the videotapes has never been proven.
The prosecutor noted that police testified during the trial that Pancoast said, 'I did it. I did it. I did it. I killed Vicki with a baseball bat.'
Jurors, given the Fourth of July holiday off, were expected to begin deliberations Thursday.
Superior Court Judge David Horowitz, in final instructions to the jury, told the panel they could find Pancoast guilty of the lesser crime of involuntary manslaughter, based on his statement that he wanted her 'to go to sleep.'
Pancoast, 34, has pleaded innocent and innocent by reason of insanity to charges he killed Miss Morgan.
Defense attorneys told jurors last month that Miss Morgan was killed because she possessed videotapes showing Reagan administration officials at sex orgies, but testimony from an attorney who first claimed to have seen the sex tapes was not allowed. Other unnamed witnesses who defense attorneys said would testify about the tapes never appeared.
Miss Morgan, 30, gained national attention in 1982 when she filed an unsuccessful multimillion-dollar palimony suit against Bloomingdale, the department store heir and Diner's Club founder who died in August 1982.
