Mother Tells of Killer’s Painful Upbringing

Shouldering some blame for her son’s criminal lifestyle, the mother of convicted murderer Mark Scott Thornton testified Monday that she raised the death-penalty defendant in an environment marked by drugs, alcohol and violence.

Markita Sarrazin, a former Thousand Oaks resident, was the first witness as the defense began putting on three weeks of testimony in hopes of persuading a Superior Court jury to spare Thornton’s life.

The jury in Judge Charles R. McGrath’s courtroom is weighing evidence to determine whether the 20-year-old defendant should die for the Sept. 14, 1993, murder of Westlake nurse Kellie O’Sullivan. The jury could also sentence Thornton to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Thornton was convicted in December of first-degree murder.

On the stand for more than four hours, Sarrazin said she cares for her son and tried her best to raise him in accordance with societal norms.

But at the time of his birth, she was a 19-year-old unskilled single mother who had already developed a liking for drugs and alcohol, she said.

Thornton was a quiet child, but was not very bright, she testified. He was diagnosed with a learning disorder when he was young and failed kindergarten, she said.

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Later in life, he would often cry because he simply could not follow directions and complete even the most basic homework assignments.

Over the years, she said, his troubles in school intensified and he dropped out of classes after finishing the 11th grade.

On cross-examination, however, prosecutors suggested that Thornton’s failure in life was due more to laziness and selfishness than to intellectual inability. And his mother conceded that her son has lacked motivation most of his life.

She also acknowledged that he seemed always to want to do as he pleased and not accept orders from authority figures.

Thornton sat calmly at the defense table and watched his mother without much expression for the most part, although at one point he appeared to be wiping tears from his face.

The 40-year-old Sarrazin broke down and cried several times. The most dramatic instance came when she was discussing Thornton’s relationship with his 13-year-old half-sister. She said the siblings have a close relationship and that the girl, Chantel, misses her brother and worries about his fate.

When she was pregnant with Thornton, Sarrazin said, his father once chased her under a table and punched her in the stomach. She also said his birth was difficult and required the use of forceps.

When he emerged, she said, “He was lopsided on his head and he had a black eye.”

Thornton never knew his father, a bisexual man who dabbled in drugs and drink, she said. Sarrazin said she came from a dysfunctional family herself and took up with Thornton’s father when she was just 15.

She finally had the man’s baby, after two abortions, in 1974 at age 19, she testified. The father only saw Thornton about half a dozen times before dying from an alcohol-related problem when his son was 2, Sarrazin said.

Thornton had two stepfathers, she said. She married her first husband when Thornton was an infant. He was also a drug user and the marriage ended in divorce quickly.

She has been married to her current husband for 18 years, she said. She described their marriage as troubled but said she would rather stay with him than end the relationship.

The Sarrazins now live in Nevada.

Defense attorneys have said that Thornton killed O’Sullivan after everyone he loved turned their backs on him. Prosecutors say Thornton kidnaped the woman and shot her in the Santa Monica Mountains to steal her car.

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Markita Sarrazin said that she, her husband and her two children moved frequently, and her son attended more than a dozen different schools. Once, he missed six months of junior high school after the family moved briefly to his stepfather’s hometown in Canada.

Thornton seemed to respect his stepfather but also seemed shaken that the man left the family several times after marrying his mother in 1977, Sarrazin testified. His absences ranged from a couple of weeks to nine months, Sarrazin said.

She also testified that Thornton had to take her to an emergency room twice, once after she slashed her wrists and once after she overdosed on codeine.

She said she kicked Thornton out of the family’s home in 1992 when he was 17, about a year before the slaying. She was upset that he was missing school and work and not doing his chores around the house, she testified.

“I said if he couldn’t abide by the rules, he could go, and he chose to go,” Sarrazin testified. “I didn’t think that he would.”

Markita Sarrazin acknowledged in court that she told Thornton that her husband was more important to her than he was. Her son was distraught over the statement but accepted it, she said.

In hindsight, she said, she wished she had not been so tough on the boy.

“He wasn’t ready to go out on his own,” the mother said. “He wasn’t capable of taking care of himself.”