Man on Trial a Third Time for Murders : Crime: Richard Delmer Boyer’s death sentence for killing Fullerton couple was overturned in 1989.

SANTA ANA — For a third time in the decade since an elderly Fullerton couple were murdered, lawyers asked a jury Monday to decide whether Richard Delmer Boyer was responsible.

The 34-year-old El Monte man faces the death penalty if convicted of killing and robbing Francis Harbitz, 67, and Eileen Harbitz, 68, the parents of a friend of Boyer. The couple were stabbed numerous times on Dec. 7, 1982, and their wallets were stolen.

Boyer’s first trial in 1984 ended in a hung jury. He was subsequently convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death, but in 1989 the state Supreme Court ruled 5 to 2 that Boyer’s confession to police had been coerced.

In that confession, Boyer said that he had gone to the Harbitz home while high on drugs and, while there, hallucinated that he was being attacked by a character from the movie “Halloween II.”

In closing arguments Monday, Deputy Dist. Atty. Charles J. Middleton said Boyer called the hallucination account “a transparent attempt” to evade responsibility, Middleton said.

When Boyer saw the couple’s wallets, Middleton said, “he had to kill what was between him and those wallets.” Boyer needed money, the prosecutor said, “and nothing (was) going to keep him from it.”

But Boyer’s defense attorney, James G. Merwin, argued that his client’s behavior was entirely consistent with PCP and cocaine intoxication. The drug-induced hallucination, Merwin said, caused him to believe that his life was being threatened.

Merwin acknowledged that the case was “bizarre” and that the couple, whom Boyer “loved, or at least liked an awful lot” were “killed for absolutely no good reason.”

After the couple welcomed him into their home and offered him food, Boyer began to “mix fantasy and reality,” Merwin said.

Among the exhibits introduced as evidence were Boyer’s blood-stained knife and slacks and Eileen Harbitz’s empty wallet, which was recovered from a storm drain.

A friend of Boyer, John Kennedy, testifying under a grant of immunity, said he had waited outside in his car when Boyer went to the Harbitz home. After Boyer returned, Kennedy said, he had two wallets and was bleeding from several knife wounds to his thigh.

Merwin said that Kennedy “was lying to us” when he testified that Boyer did not appear to be under the influence of drugs when he went to the Harbitz home.

Boyer, Merwin said, had a “substantial, long-term drug abuse problem.”

However, Middleton insisted that there was no evidence that Boyer smoked a PCP-laced cigarette the day of the killings and that he had injected only a small amount of cocaine. The prosecutor also said that if Boyer is convicted of capital murder and the trial goes to a penalty phase, he will introduce evidence that Boyer committed a third Fullerton murder, of a 75-year-old man in 1980.

At the defense table, Boyer, dressed in a white shirt and tie, khaki slacks and white, high-topped running shoes, took notes and doodled.

Final arguments continue today.