LOS ANGELES -- Convicted killer Marvin Pancoast may have beaten Vicki Morgan to death with a baseball bat as she slept to get even with a psychiatrist he desired sexually, another psychiatrist testified Tuesday.
Dr. Edward Vogeler, the second expert witness Tuesday to declare Pancoast was insane at the time of the July 7, 1983, murder, said Pancoast transferred his agressive feelings of rejection from the doctor to Miss Morgan, his roommate and onetime mistress to the late presidential confidantAlfred Bloomingdale.
Pancoast, Vogeler said, was attracted to psychiatrist Paul Catalupo and was badly hurt when Catalupo terminated their counseling sessions two days before the killing.
Vogeler, who treated Pancoast in 1969 and interviewed him again Monday, also said Pancoast told him about smelling an odor of cleaning fluid in the room the night of the killing.
The odor, Vogeler said, quoting Pancoast, 'was present at the body,' meaning Pancoast was undergoing an 'olfactory hallucination' during the killing.
'I've had people say they can smell death ... it's a severe sign of mental illness,' Vogeler testified.
Because Pancoast pleaded innocent and innocent by reason of insanity, the same jury that convicted him of first-degree murder last July 6 must decide his mental state at the time of the slaying.
Prosecutors said at the beginning of the sanity phase that Pancoast was sane when he killed Miss Morgan.
If the jurors find he was insane, Pancoast would be given an indeterminate term in a state mental hospital. If they find him sane, he could be sentenced to a maximum 26-years-to-life in prison.
Earlier Tuesday, the chief psychiatrist at Camarillo State Hospital also testified that Pancoast was insane.
'The fact that he made a rational confession does not change my opinion that he was insane at the time,' said Dr. Irving Matzner, who evaluated Pancoast a month after the murder.
Matzner, who began testifying Monday, said he believes Pancoast has been insane for the past 15 years and will never recover.
He likened Pancoast to a 3- or 4-year-old child who was without the ability to make a moral judgment.
Recalling that Pancoast told authorities he crushed Miss Morgan's skull with a baseball bat because he wanted her to go to sleep, Matzner said Pancoast did so without realizing the implications of his act.
'It is not uncommon in schizophrenia for a person to have a strong belief in rebirth,' Matzner said. 'Death was not really a reality for him.'
Pressed by defense attorneys, Matzner said recovery from schizophrenia is 'more than highly unlikely, it doesn't happen at all,' and he concluded Pancoast will be mad for the rest of his life.
'He has an illness that doesn't go away and it doesn't get better,' Matzner said.
The most persuasive evidence against Pancoast, 34, during his trial was a taped confession he made to police the morning after slaying. The prosecution's own experts said the alleged murder weapon was free of fingerprints.
