Woman Testifies in Retrial of Family’s 1980 Slaying

It was a crime that shattered an already devastated family. Twenty years ago this July, a 15-year-old North Hollywood girl woke in the middle of the night to find out her father and younger brother were dead, each shot in the head.

The man later arrested, Kenneth Crandell, was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. But his conviction was overturned.

Crandell, who allegedly confessed to Marie Pruett that he killed her father, Ernest, and 14-year-old brother, Edward, at their house as she slept in the next room July 6, 1980, is being tried again in Van Nuys Superior Court. After all these years, he faces a new judge, a new prosecutor and a new jury. But he also faces the terrified girl, now a 34-year-old woman who took the witness stand Wednesday against him.

Crandell, 66, sat mostly impassive in the courtroom of Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Sandy R. Kriegler on the first day of his latest legal battle for freedom, after a nearly two-decades-long series of successful appeals that has outraged the surviving members of the Pruett family. He is charged with murder, kidnapping and assault with intent to rape.

During opening statements, the prosecutor and defense attorney agreed on many basic facts: that Crandell was a family friend invited to live at the home of the financially struggling Ernest Pruett, a single parent to three children after his alcoholic wife died. And that Ernest Pruett was himself an alcoholic who got into fights when drunk.

But they differed sharply over who was responsible for the double homicide.

Evidence will show that Crandell killed Ernest and Edward Pruett after a drunken fight, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Lea Purwin D’Agostino. The elder Pruett was upset because Crandell was “sloughing off” at work and he feared that Crandell’s behavior would reflect badly on another son, who had helped Crandell get the job. Crandell shot Ernest, D’Agostino said, then shot Edward.

Crandell’s attorney, Michael V. White, contends that his client is innocent. Ernest Pruett killed his own son during an alcoholic rage, and Crandell killed the elder Pruett in self-defense, White told the jury.

That’s not how the now-married Marie Pruett Tyler said she remembered that July night.

“Marie, I have something to tell you, something really bad has happened,” Tyler recalled Crandell telling her, after she got up at 4:30 a.m. for a drink of water. Her father and brother were dead, he told her. Tyler recalled him saying: “I shot them both in the head.”

He tried to rape her, and then kidnapped her and her 7-year-old sister to help him escape. He drove them to Marina del Rey to borrow getaway money, then to a dumpster near Anaheim Stadium to throw away a pillow he allegedly used to muffle the sound of his gun, Tyler said.

The red-and-white plaid pillow, which had been made by her mother, had small round holes with burn marks, Tyler said.

She and her sister eventually escaped, and she called police, Tyler said.

Under cross-examination, however, Tyler’s testimony demonstrated the challenges facing the prosecution in trying a 20-year-old case.

Witnesses have died. Files and exhibits have been lost or destroyed. Those still living must dig deep into memory to recall specific events.

Before Crandell kidnapped her, she hit him over the head with a frying pan, Tyler said. The impact cracked the skillet but didn’t seriously hurt him, she said.

“He said, ‘Now I’ll have to keep an eye on you. If you do anything like that again, I’ll shoot you,’ ” Tyler said.

Defense attorney White, referring to Tyler’s testimony from the early 1980s, pointed out she never said then that Crandell had threatened to shoot her.

White also tried to portray Ernest Pruett as a violent drunk.

Her parents hit each other, and her father spanked Edward, Tyler said, but he never hurt his children, and she never saw him with a gun. “He wasn’t this explosive, violent man,” Tyler said.

During Crandell’s first trial, he represented himself. “Mr. Crandell did a job which absolutely astounded me,” said the presiding judge at the time, Armand Arabian, according to court documents.

Arabian added that the defendant’s fine trial performance had given the prosecutor “a run for his money.” In 1988, the state Supreme Court reversed his death sentence.

In 1996, a federal district court found that the deputy public defender who originally represented Crandell was incompetent. That decision was affirmed by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which remanded the case for retrial.