FRESNO — In the days after the worst mass murder in this city's history, police portrayed suspect Marcus Wesson as a cold-blooded killer who, one by one, shot his nine children to death rather than risk losing them to authorities.
But as his murder trial opened Thursday in Fresno County Superior Court, prosecutor Lisa Gamoian left open the distinct possibility that the 58-year-old Wesson never fired a single shot in the March 12, 2004, deaths. Even so, he was every bit a killer, she said, a father who used incest, fear and perversions of Christian teachings to persuade his children -- two of whom were also his grandchildren -- to carry out a murder-suicide pact.
The prosecutor cited evidence indicating that it was Wesson's 26-year-old daughter, Sebhrenah, who probably shot the children, ages 1 to 17, in the head before turning the .22-caliber handgun on herself. She was found on top of a pile of bodies in the back bedroom of their rented house with the gun beneath her right arm.
Wesson listened intently as Gamoian described him in her opening as a murderer who wielded mind control like a weapon.
" 'It's better to die than have the government or some agency break up the family,' " Gamoian quoted Wesson as telling his older children. " 'Are you ready to die? If [Child Protective Services] ever comes in, we are to kill the kids and kill ourselves so we can be with the Lord.' "
Defense attorney Ralph Torres agreed that Wesson, who is charged with nine counts of murder and seven counts of rape, had distorted the Bible to justify his perversions, which included polygamy and sexual intercourse with his own children when they turned 13.
But for all his distrust of the government and talk about "going to the Lord," Torres told jurors, Wesson never devised a murder-suicide plan that they were told to carry out.
Torres quoted from interviews with Wesson's seven surviving adult children. All said their father talked in the abstract about killing themselves if a government agency threatened to break up the family. But there was never a plan to commit mass murder or suicide, they said. He never taught them how to use a gun or poison themselves. It was just talk, part of his ramblings over the years, they said.
Torres said an audio recording of the events leading up to the shootings -- taped by a family member -- will show that Wesson welcomed the intervention of police that day. He calmly tried to reason with two of his former common-law wives who had come that afternoon to take their children away from him, the attorney said.
