Suspect in 2 Jail Deaths Described as ‘Con Artist’ by Mother in Letter Read at Competency Hearing

The mother of double murder suspect Jerry Thomas Pick once described her son as a “con artist” who could “con you out of your father’s gold watch at a poker game,” prosecutors said Wednesday.

Juanita Pick characterized her son that way in an August, 1986, letter to his parole officer in Los Angeles. On Wednesday, that letter was introduced into evidence at Pick’s competency hearing as prosecutors argued that the 24-year-old Ohio native is not only competent to stand trial but has been feigning delusions about CIA conspiracies and talks with God to avoid a murder trial.

Pick is charged with killing two cell mates earlier this year in separate incidents at Orange County Jail, where he was being held on a purse-snatching charge. If the jury finds him mentally competent to stand trial, Pick could face life in prison without parole.

He is accused of beating John Franklin Wilcox, 71, to death Jan. 17 and of strangling Arthur Oviedo on Jan. 30.

Milton Grimes, Pick’s attorney, maintains that his client has steadfastly refused to cooperate in preparing his defense and, in fact, is incapable of doing so.

Each time they sit down to talk strategy, Grimes contends, Pick begins talking incoherently about CIA plots and other alleged conspiracies. Among other things, the defense says Pick believes that he is destined to take control of the PTL religious ministry once headed by evangelists Jim and Tammy Bakker and is somehow responsible for the U.S. retaliatory bombing of Libya last year.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Bryan F. Brown says Pick’s outbursts and ramblings about conspiracies and personal chats with God are merely a ruse.

According to the prosecutor, Pick’s erratic courtroom conduct is designed to convince the jury that he is “bozo . . . crazy.” Pick, Brown added, is a master manipulator and malingerer.

Pick contends that he is competent, willing and able to stand trial but has shown irrational behavior throughout his competency hearing. During Wednesday’s session before Superior Court Judge Leonard H. McBride, Pick interrupted testimony four times with sudden outbursts, including one in which he claimed the “Holy Spirit is going to move me.’

Another time, he suggested that the hearing itself held no importance because he expected to be released in a few days.

In Wednesday’s session, Brown attacked the objectivity of Dr. Martha Rogers, a forensic psychologist from Fullerton who has testified that Pick does not seem capable of assisting his attorney in preparing his own defense.

Brown took issue with Rogers’ description of Pick as a “lousy crook” because he attempted to steal a woman’s purse in broad daylight in front of a busy Garden Grove store. Pick was wrestled to the ground by a crowd of onlookers after failing to pull the purse away from the woman.

The defense has said the theft attempt is an example of Pick’s consistently poor judgment since suffering brain injuries in a 1981 Ohio auto accident.

To the contrary, Brown said, if the woman had not refused to let go of her purse, Pick would probably have escaped.