Mother says ex-husband’s abuse scared her from questioning daughter’s whereabouts

Prosecutors rested their case today in the retrial of a former Huntington Beach woman accused of murdering her 3-year-old daughter nearly 40 years ago.

Donna Prentice, now 61, was first tried last year in the disappearance and presumed murder of daughter Michelle Pulsifer.

The trial resulted in a 10-2 hung jury, leaning on the side of a guilty verdict.

Now gray-haired, Prentice sat motionless during the trial Thursday, staring straight ahead.

Prentice’s boyfriend at the time of the disappearance, James Michael “Mike” Kent, testified before his 2005 death that he buried Michelle in Williams Canyon, a remote part of eastern Orange County.

Prentice’s former attorney has not returned for the new trial; he has been replaced by Alternate Public Defender Ken Norelli.

The case lay dormant until 2001, when Michelle’s aunt hired a private investigator to search for Michelle.

When he deduced that the child was dead two years later, he began working with authorities.

Kent died of kidney failure while in custody, before he could be tried for the murder.

Michelle was last seen alive during the Fourth of July weekend of 1969.

Michelle’s older brother, Richard Pulsifer Jr., testified during the last trial that the last time he saw her alive was when she ran into his room early one morning, saying “Hide me, hide me.” Pulsifer said his mother came and took little Michelle away.

Kent told District Attorney investigator Ed Berakovich in a recorded interrogation that he helped bury Michelle, but denied killing her. Kent said Michelle was already dead by the time he entered her bedroom.

Senior Deputy District Attorney Larry Yellin, who is prosecuting the case, said Prentice and Kent took their two sons from previous relationships, as well as the family pets, and drove to Illinois.

Prentice said Kent told his de facto family that there was no room for the little girl in the move, and that the logistics of having a girl live in the house along with the two boys would be too difficult.

“It was more of a convenience to have just the two boys,” Prentice said.

She said Kent grew increasingly abusive to both her and the children, and scared her away, in a method that was never described, from ever asking about her daughter.

Prentice maintained in a recorded interrogation by Berakovich that she told people who asked about Michelle that she “wanted to believe” her daughter was in Canada or the northern United States, alternately, with Kent’s sister or mother.

“I want you to tell me that she is with Mike’s sister,” she told Berakovich.

Prentice said she tried to leave Kent several times, but he would always “find her,” and convince her that everything would change. The cycle of abuse would continue, until she left again.

Prentice finally left Kent for the last time, with her son, when he shot a gun several times near her head, she said.

Berakovich asked Prentice during the taped interrogation if she would tell him if Kent had done something to her daughter.

“Yes,” the recorded Prentice said, after a long pause.

In the courtroom, Prentice dabbed her nose with a tissue.

Present during the proceedings has been Noble Prentice, Prentice’s third husband, who sits each day on his wife’s side of the courtroom.

CANDICE BAKER can be reached at (714) 966-4631 or at candice.baker@latimes.com.