Huber Death Described in Grisly Detail

SANTA ANA — In calm and measured tones, a prosecutor on Thursday graphically described the horrific last hours of 23-year-old Denise Huber’s life, saying she was dragged from her car, sexually assaulted and smashed in the head 31 times with a roofer’s nail puller.

“Denise Huber did not go easily,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher Evans said during opening statements in the long-awaited trial of 39-year-old John J. Famalaro.

Evans said Famalaro took Huber to the Laguna Niguel warehouse where he had been living, sodomized her, then “decided Denise Huber would not be allowed to live.”

Famalaro put three plastic bags over the Newport Beach woman’s head and struck her with such “fierce and devastating blows” that parts of the bags were found embedded in her skull three years later when her frozen body was discovered, Evans said.

Famalaro, a former Lake Forest house painter, sat impassively during Evans’ address in Orange County Superior Court. He could be sentenced to death if convicted of kidnapping and murdering Huber after her car broke down on the Costa Mesa Freeway in the middle of the night on June 3, 1991.

Famalaro was arrested three years later when Huber’s nude, bludgeoned and handcuffed body was found in a freezer stored in a Ryder moving truck parked in the driveway of Famalaro’s Arizona home. That grisly discovery ended one of the most famous missing person cases in Orange County history.

Evans said Famalaro kept Huber’s frozen body “as a perverse trophy to remind himself of the success he had that night.”

Huber was driving home from a rock concert in Inglewood when a rear tire of her car blew out, forcing her to stop on the freeway shoulder less than three miles from her home.

“That flat tire cost her her life,” Evans told told a jury of nine women and three men.

The flat occurred in a well lighted area, where Huber easily could have used a call box or walked to a nearby convenience store by going through an existing opening in a chain-link fence. But before she could, Evans contended, Famalaro appeared and kidnapped her.

Evans displayed a large photo of the black high heels Huber wore that night, showing the leather stripped off the backs.

“At some point in their meeting, the defendant dragged her,” Evans said. “The defendant was concerned that Ms. Huber would be able to identify him or that Ms. Huber was going to be able to see where he was going to take her. So he blindfolded her.”

At some point--and Evans said he would fill in the chronology later--Famalaro placed three white plastic bags over Huber’s head “to control the bleeding,” then “he raised his hand and struck her as hard as he could in the head.”

Huber’s mother, Ione Huber, 53, of Mandan, Ariz., sat in the back row Thursday, the first time she has been in the same room with Famalaro. She had been scheduled to testify, but was asked to return Monday when the court session ran long.

Her husband, Dennis, 57, will arrive in Orange County over the weekend to attend the trial, she said. Both parents had expressed some apprehension about attending the trial because of the emotional toll.

On Thursday, Ione Huber said she got through the first day fine.

“I was sitting back in the corner away from him,” she said. “I don’t know how it will be when I actually have to go up there and testify.”

Famalaro’s 71-year-old mother, Anne Famalaro, who also lives in Arizona and was sitting in the row ahead of Ione Huber, was visibly upset during Evans’ remarks.

Later, she said the odds were stacked against her son, whom she described as “a good boy.” She had been disappointed, she said, that several pretrial rulings had gone against him.

“It’s like David and Goliath,” she said.

Among witnesses called Thursday was Robert Calvert, 28, of Huntington Beach, who was the last of Huber’s family or friends to see her alive. Huber had dropped him off after the rock concert and had headed home.

Asked how much they had had to drink that night, Calvert said “four to five shots of vodka” each and some beers. He said they were not intoxicated.

Under cross-examination, Deputy Public Defender Leonard Gumlia focused on that issue. He said outside court that it was not his intent to allege that Huber was drunk but to suggest that she had drunk enough not to want to summon help from authorities and to take “a little more risk than you might otherwise do in that situation.”

But Gumlia said he wanted to make clear that his questions were “not in any way meant to cast aspersions on Denise Huber at all.”

At the start of Thursday’s proceedings, Gumlia asked the judge to excuse the jury, arguing that their opinions about his client had been tainted during the selection process. He then asked that the jury be sequestered because of intense public interest in the case. Superior Court Judge John J. Ryan refused to select a new jury and said sequestering the group would be considered “if it becomes necessary.”

Famalaro’s attorneys have chosen to make their opening statements when the prosecution has finished presenting its case.

“This is a case where there are a lot of circumstantial evidence issues,” Gumlia said.

Defense attorneys have declined to say whether Famalaro will testify. They have said their focus will be on disproving the kidnapping and sexual assault allegations that make Famalaro eligible for the death penalty.