Couple Go to Court in Burbank Slaying

PASADENA —  Months before her mother was found shot and stabbed in her Burbank home, 20-year-old Amber Merrie Bray penned an eerie note to her boyfriend, Jeffrey Glenn Ayers.

In looping handwriting better suited to a teenager’s love letter than to a death warrant, the one-time high school cheerleader and honors student allegedly laid out the crime that would claim the life of Warner Bros. record executive Dixie Lee Hollier, 42.

“What do you think of this? . . . someone breaks into the house and kills . . . mom,” the note reads.

“I come home to discover them, call police (neighbors hear nothing) and it goes on record as an unsolved homicide. I like it.”

Later this week, two juries will sit in the same Pasadena courtroom and separately decide the guilt or innocence of Bray and Ayers, weighing the state’s claim that the note and other evidence proves the allegations of murder and conspiracy. The trial, before Superior Court Judge Teri Schwartz, is expected to last five weeks.

Bray and Ayers also have been charged with two special circumstances in the killing, including lying in wait and murder for financial gain, a $310,000 inheritance. If convicted, they could face a maximum sentence of life in state prison without the possibility of parole.

Bray and Ayers have pleaded not guilty to murder and conspiracy. Their lawyers declined to comment on the facts of the case or their trial strategy.

Prosecutors also declined to comment. At a hearing last year, Deputy Dist. Atty. Al MacKenzie summed up the case this way:

“I think the bottom line is that this defendant is a very smart, shrewd young woman, who got her boyfriend to kill her mother as part of a conspiracy to collect the benefits of her mother’s estate.”

Bray’s lawyer, Joy Wilensky, could choose from a number of options to raise doubts about her client’s guilt, such as attacking Bray’s interrogation and arrest by police, expanding on statements by Bray about alleged abuse suffered at the hands of her mother or shifting blame to Ayers by citing statements in which he told police he wanted to take full responsibility for the killing.

That admission and other potentially incriminating statements, including one in which Ayers allegedly asked a friend to help kill Hollier, could make the case considerably tougher for Ayers’ lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Patricia Mulligan.

But the biggest defense headaches are likely to be the eyewitnesses to the crime, particularly Amber Bray’s younger sister, Amy. She was 15 at the time her mother was slain.

Amy Bray told authorities that her sister and mother fought, at times coming to blows, according to court documents.

On Jan. 16, 1996, the morning of the killing, Amy Bray said she was awakened by two loud bangs. After rushing to the kitchen, she said she saw Ayers hitting her mother in the head with a gun, according to court documents.

While Hollier shouted “Help!” Ayers yelled, “She has to be stopped,” according to court documents. When Amy tried to call 911, she was thwarted by sister Amber, then by Ayers, who both pulled the phone cord out the wall, court documents show.

Jurors will also hear from police officers who arrived at Hollier’s home in the 2300 block of North Oaks Street at 5 a.m. Several officers have said they heard moaning before spotting a man straddling a body and thrusting his hands downward. Upon their entering, Ayers stood with his hands in the air and said he was surrendering, according to police.

“I’m responsible for what happened,” Ayers allegedly said. “I’m fully aware of what I’ve done.”

Inside the residence, Hollier, bloodied from severe wounds to her head, neck, chest and torso, lay sprawled in the front hallway while her three children--Amy, Amber and their 5-year-old brother--were found hiding in a back bedroom, police said.

Investigators later recovered two butcher knives and a blue steel revolver, the same gun one of Ayers’ friends told police she sold to him for $100 the night before the killing.

Ayers told police that the killing had nothing to do with money but was about his fear that Amber would kill herself, according to court documents. Ayers’ friend Christopher Martin told investigators he heard Amber Bray tell Ayers she would kill herself.

“You need to do something about my mother or I’m going to kill myself,” Bray reportedly said, adding that she was being abused by her mother.

Prosecutors are counting on the powerful evidence of Bray’s own words.

“Have I snapped? Plotting murder and stuff,” she asked in her letter to Ayers, later seized by police. “After years of abuse I’ve had it.”