Prosecutors Open Case Against 4 Teens Accused in Slaying

MALIBU —  Prosecutors in the trial of four Conejo Valley teenagers accused of killing a 16-year-old peer last May opened their case Tuesday with a glimpse inside a panic-stricken suburban household in Agoura Hills the night of the slaying.

“The boys came in and they’re bleeding,” a distraught woman told a 911 operator in an emotional tape that prosecutors played for the jury.

The operator tried to calm the woman, asking her for information about the wounds.

“They’re stabbed in the stomach,” the woman said. “One of them is on the floor.”

Get some towels, apply pressure to the wounds with them, the operator said. Are the boys pale, are they sweating?

At that point, the line went dead. Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeffrey Semow turned off the tape machine and turned to the jury.

“That was Nancy McLoren, ladies and gentlemen,” Semow said. “She was talking about her son Michael, 16, and his friend James Farris III, also 16.”

Michael McLoren, Semow explained, recovered from the stab wounds he received on the night of May 22. Farris did not.

“He stopped breathing very shortly after that call was made,” Semow said, directing the attention of the seven-woman, five-man jury to a high school photograph of Farris pinned to a back wall. In the audience, the victim’s mother, Judie Farris, took deep breaths and wiped her eyes.

Five teen-agers were charged in Farris’ death, including two brothers, Jason Holland, 19, and Micah Holland, 16, of Thousand Oaks.

Also standing trial are Brandon Hein,) 19, of Oak Park and Tony Miliotti, 18, a Westlake Village resident. Because of the serious nature of the crime, murder with the special circumstance of robbery, all are being tried as adults. A fifth teenager, Chris Velardo, 18, of Oak Park has pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and is awaiting sentencing.

None of the four defense attorneys made opening statements, but Ira Salzman, who is representing Jason Holland, said afterward the prosecution had “brought forward nothing new.”

The 911 tape would not be admissible as evidence, Salzman said.

“It’s revealing that that is how they started the opening statement,” Salzman said. “It was clearly an appeal to emotions.”

Tuesday, Semow spent more than an hour introducing the prosecution’s evidence from the night of May 22, describing the defendants as bullies who started with the intent to steal marijuana from McLoren and ended up killing Farris and wounding McLoren.

He painted a story of two groups of friends who, prior to the disastrous encounter on May 22, overlapped occasionally because one of them, Velardo, was dating a girl who was close to McLoren’s girlfriend.

In his opening statement, Semow took pains to distinguish between McLoren and Farris. McLoren “had some problems,” he said. He smoked a good amount of marijuana and sometimes sold small amounts of it to friends.

But Farris was different. “He was extroverted, well-adjusted, an outdoorsman who was very close to both his parents but independent at the same time.”

Semow said McLoren had gone through a rough time three years ago when he was arrested in connection with the theft of a gun from a friend’s house--a friend whose father was a Los Angeles Police Department officer.

McLoren, Semow said, had given police the name of an accomplice, incurring the wrath of other kids who labeled him a snitch. They “made his life hell,” Semow told the jury. According to the prosecution, the younger Holland brother, Micah, continued to make his life hell.

“You are going to hear that on occasion Micah Holland was over at the fort smoking marijuana,” Semow said. “This was not because they were friends. It was because Michael was afraid of Micah.”

McLoren’s clique regularly gathered at a shack in his backyard, a place they called the fort. They smoked pot, watched television and hung out. The fort, according to Semow, was McLoren’s “little zone of privacy.” On May 22, six friends, including Farris, spent the afternoon in the fort. They were interrupted by a visit from Velardo, at about 5 p.m. Some or all of the defendants were with Velardo, but remained in the car, Semow said.

But they returned later, he continued, a little after 7 p.m. They first stole a wallet from a woman at a nearby park, then went back to McLoren’s house, Semow said. The afternoon party was over, and only McLoren and Farris were left. They were working out on a punching bag when the defendants climbed over a fence and confronted them, demanding pot from McLoren, Semow said. When he refused, a fight started inside the little fort. It only lasted a few minutes, but when it was over, Farris was dying and McLoren was seriously injured, Semow said.