Alcohol, Pills Blamed for Near-Fatal Attack on Father : Trial: Son says he mistook elderly man for an intruder. Harrison Douglas Kline, 44, had a controversial sleeping pill in his system at the time.

SANTA ANA —  A 44-year-old Connecticut man, accused of nearly beating his 77-year-old father to death at Leisure World in Laguna Hills last year, was under the influence of alcohol and a controversial sleeping pill at the time of the attack, he and his attorney said in court Tuesday.

The suspect, Harrison Douglas Kline, also told an Orange County Superior Court jury that he was out of his mind and thought he was beating a masked intruder.

Kline, a New York City advertising executive, is charged with attempted murder, torture and mayhem in the November, 1992, assault that left his father, Harry D. Kline, indefinitely on life support.

Harrison Kline said he had come to Orange County to be with his father in the days after his mother’s death. He said he recalled drinking alcohol, but did not remember taking the prescription drug Halcion, which laboratory reports later showed were in his system.

Harrison Kline said he woke up around midnight when “somebody jumped in my face.” He said a naked intruder had frightened his mother weeks before, and he mistook the man for the intruder and beat him with his fists and a ceramic object.

“His hair was long and spiky, and his mouth was melted and burnt and dripping like a mask, like he had a clown suit on,” Kline testified. “. . . I was totally savage, out of my mind.”

Kline dialed 911, saying he had caught an intruder and that his father was missing. Detectives found Kline’s father hogtied with a phone cord and laying in a pool of blood in the atrium of his home. His skull was split open from his neck to his forehead, his eyes were swollen shut and part of his ear was missing, according to court records.

Throughout the day Tuesday, Deputy Dist. Atty. Thomas A. Glazier challenged Harrison Kline’s claims that he was unable to remember some significant details of the attack.

Halcion users have reported episodes of violent behavior, amnesia and other mental disorders since the drug’s introduction in 1982. The drug is banned in England, France and several other European countries.