Psychologist says Prentice’s son’s memory of sister may not be reliable

An expert on hypnosis testified today on the unreliability of memories in the retrial of Donna Prentice, a former Huntington Beach woman accused of murdering her then-3-year-old daughter Michelle on the Fourth of July weekend in 1969.

Alternate Public Defender Ken Norelli brought professor Steven Jay Lynn to the stand to help refute a claim by Prentice’s son, Richard Pulsifer Jr., that during a hypnosis session in the early 1980s, Pulsifer remembered little Michelle running into his room the morning of her disappearance, saying “Hide me, hide me.”

Pulsifer said that his mother then came to take Michelle away.

Lynn, a highly published clinical and academic psychologist who specializes in memory and hypnosis, testified that a person’s memory is highly fallible, and dependent on a person’s current mood, beliefs and expectations.

“Because people tend to believe that hypnosis has special powers, they have an expectation that it will improve memories,” Lynn said.

Pulsifer was said to have his father and stepmother in the room with him during the hypnosis session, which Lynn said could add to the chance of a confabulation, or made-up memory.

Other people present during a session must be expert hypnotherapists who are aware of such ‘tainting’ effects, Lynn said.

“People in the room confuse our unconscious through body language, and comments can cue the subject in very subtle ways,” Lynn said.

He added that having parents in the room may create a desire to please them, calling Pulsifer’s hypnosis session a “clear violation of safeguards.”

Norelli hopes to prove that Prentice was just another victim of boyfriend James Michael “Mike” Kent’s abuse, who was too scared of Kent to ask her daughter’s whereabouts.

Norelli also presented several other facts that were undisputed by the prosecution, including that Kent had several felonies and misdemeanors — including those for aggravated battery and vandalism — and several violations of a protective order issued on his former girlfriend, Corinne Hall.

Hall met Kent in 1979, Norelli said, and had a relationship with him for the next ten years that included heavy drug and alcohol use and several abusive episodes.

Hall said Kent shoved her down stairs, punched her in the head, pulled her hair and spit in her face, Norelli said.

Like Prentice, Hall tried to flee several times but was forced back into the relationship by Kent, she said in a past statement.

Prentice said that 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.

The first trial of Prentice, now 61, resulted last year in a hung jury.

Kent testified before his 2005 death that he buried Michelle in Williams Canyon, a remote part of eastern Orange County.

Prosecutors in the current case say Prentice either murdered her daughter herself, or aided and abetted in the child’s disappearance and abuse.

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

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

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

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

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

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 that Prentice and Kent then 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 that 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.

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