Struggle Caused Killing, Murder Defendant Says

A bank robber, who was once on a federal government list of “most wanted” criminals and is now being tried for murder in San Fernando Superior Court, Tuesday re-enacted a violent struggle over a gun that he said led to the death of a henchman.

Marcus Howell, 48, was charged with killing his assistant, William (B.J.) Johnson, allegedly after discovering that Johnson may have been skimming funds from the profits of a gang that dealt drugs and committed robberies.

Johnson was shot six times at close range with a .38-caliber revolver on March 15, 1985, in Monterey Park and his body dumped in a grocery parking lot in Sunland.

The murder was unsolved for several years, but tips eventually led police to Howell, who authorities said had jumped federal parole and moved to California after serving 10 years of a 26-year sentence for eight bank robbery convictions.

Howell had been convicted of eight bank robberies on the East Coast in the 1970s and of possessing heroin for sale, authorities said. He testified in the current trial that he participated in as many as 30 bank robberies. He ran a heroin ring in Pittsburg and was on the U.S. Marshals list of most wanted criminals in the mid-1980s, when he and the rest of the Pittsburgh ring moved to California, prosecutors said.

Howell’s attorney, Larry M. Baker, has argued that Johnson was killed by accident in a struggle over a gun.

Prosecutors speculated that Howell discovered Johnson had been skimming profits. Witnesses testified that Johnson was killed after he told Howell, the acknowledged leader, that he would not drop out of the gang. The two men fought in the back room of Howell’s Monterey Park house and witnesses said they heard Johnson say “I am not going to leave all this--you got to kill me first.”

Shortly afterwards, the witnesses testified, they heard shots and Howell emerged from the room, saying that “B.J. was dead.”

But under cross-examination by Deputy Dist. Atty. Leland B. Harris Tuesday, Howell denied shooting Johnson deliberately. He claimed that Johnson “said he wasn’t leaving and that he would kill me,” then pulled a gun.

Howell testified that he tried to grab the gun and during the ensuing struggle the weapon went off. He said Johnson’s fingers were on the trigger when the gun fired.

At Harris’ request, Howell used a pen as a mock pistol and re-enacted the alleged struggle. With Harris standing in for Johnson, the defendant and the prosecutor grappled from the witness stand to the jury box.

Harris said the forensic evidence does not support Howell’s story of a fierce struggle. The six bullet holes in Johnson’s chest were grouped within the span of a hand, he said, and there was no gunpowder residue on Johnson’s hands, indicating Johnson was not holding the weapon when it fired.