Son Given 25 Years in Murder of His Father : Crime: He enters guilty plea, then says a man who has already been acquitted is the one he hired to pull the trigger.

SANTA ANA —  A young Anaheim man who admitted hiring a gunman to kill his parents pleaded guilty to first-degree murder Thursday and publicly fingered the triggerman as a friend who already has been acquitted in the crime.

David John Terry, 20, who has remained in custody since the day after the Nov. 28, 1988, shooting death of his father, Owen L. Terry, was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison by Superior Court Judge Myron S. Brown.

Assistant Dist. Atty. Edgar A. Freeman said Terry pleaded guilty in part to spare his mother, who survived the shooting, the pain of testifying against him.

“There is at least a noble side to it; he knows what she has been through,” Freeman said.

Terry also pleaded guilty to attempted murder in the shooting of his mother, Pauline Terry.

By pleading guilty in his father’s death, Terry was spared the possibility of facing a murder conviction with the special circumstances of robbery or financial gain. That conviction would have automatically resulted in a sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole.

“That was a possibility, but considering his age at the time of the shootings (18) and the fact his co-defendant was acquitted, we’re satisfied that this is a just result,” Freeman said.

On the night of the shooting, Pauline Terry survived four gunshot wounds to crawl past the dead body of her 56-year-old husband to dial 911 for the police. She identified Richard L. Rodriguez, 22, a friend of her son’s, as the man who broke into their Anaheim home and shot them.

But in a murder trial earlier this year, Rodriguez was acquitted after jurors said they were left with “reasonable doubt” because they could not be sure Pauline Terry had remembered events from that night clearly.

During that trial, Pauline Terry, an instructional aide at Riverdale Elementary School in Orange, identified Rodriguez as the assailant and added: “I will never forget his eyes. They had so much anger and hate.”

She said her husband, an accountant, had been asleep in a reclining chair with the family cat on his lap when he was shot.

At his hearing Thursday, the young Terry acknowledged he had given a loaded gun to Rodriguez to carry out the shootings. Prosecutors contend that Terry had promised to pay the killer $3,500 plus profits from any jewelry stolen.

“Nothing has changed,” Freeman said. “We still contend it was Rodriguez he hired to kill his parents.”

After the sentencing, Pauline Terry was too shaken up to talk with the media, said Mary Ferris of the county’s victim-witness program, who has been counseling her. But she authorized Ferris to relay some of her sentiments.

“David might have planned it, but the man who pulled the trigger is out walking the streets,” Ferris said Terry told her. “Her biggest fear is that he will do it again.”

Ferris said Pauline Terry had been upset about the jurors’ decision in the Rodriguez case, claiming they “made a horrible mistake.”

Terry told police that he had given Rodriguez his father’s .45-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver. It was the same weapon found on Rodriguez when he was arrested hiding out near a river bank shortly after the shooting.

Prosecutor Freeman had been so upset about the jury’s verdict in the Rodriguez case that he researched whether he could seek federal charges against the young man for violation of the Terrys’ civil rights. But Freeman said that did not appear to be a feasible path after talking to federal authorities.

In a videotaped statement submitted to the court, Pauline Terry said she still cannot understand how her adoptive son turned on the parents who raised him.

“How this could happen is beyond my comprehension,” Terry said. “My husband and I loved David with all our hearts and souls. We gave him a happy, normal childhood, not just a material one. We supported him in every way.”

She described her late husband, Owen, as “a kind, forgiving, gentle person. How David could have planned this horrendous act is unbelievable.”

In the video, the defendant’s mother addressed the judge directly, and said that a stiff sentence for her son was “justified for the tragic and senseless act” committed on her and her husband.

“The person I was on the morning of Nov. 28, 1988, was taken from me,” Terry said. “I will never be the same.”

David Terry told The Times in a jailhouse interview last year that he had been high on drugs when he hired someone to kill his parents and that he is now remorseful.

He said he had used marijuana regularly since age 13 and that before the shootings he had been high on cocaine and a form of LSD.

“That night I was really flying,” he said. “When I’m high I don’t remember anything.”