Dorka Zeman, a blond beauty of Czech descent, married Bob Lisker in 1946. They had been dating for about a year when another couple at a New Year's Eve party in Hollywood playfully dared them to tie the knot.
A little tipsy, they accepted the challenge and drove through the night to Tijuana, where they were wed the next morning. He was 19; she was 29.
Dorka soon became pregnant, but had a miscarriage. The couple kept trying to have a child but eventually gave up and poured their energies into their careers -- his as a lawyer, hers as a film cutter for Technicolor.
In 1964, one of Bob's clients asked for help with a delicate matter. Her 17-year-old daughter was pregnant. The family wanted to put the baby up for adoption.
Lisker said he and his wife would take the child. The baby was 3 days old when they brought him home in June 1965. They named him Bruce.
Dorka, then 49, was not "particularly enthusiastic," her husband recalled years later. "But once the baby got home, she was delighted." She quit her job to become a full-time mother.
Their Sherman Oaks neighborhood was a child's paradise, with wide-open spaces for flying model airplanes, playing baseball and riding trail bikes. Bruce splashed in the family's backyard pool, dressed up as a tiger for Halloween and went on Boy Scout camp-outs.
In a faded snapshot from 1973, a grinning, blond-haired Bruce, then 8, displays a Little League trophy he won with the San Fernando Valley Pirates.
Before long, Bruce's poor grades and rambunctious behavior began to cause friction between him and his mother.
"I was basically the class clown, and I got in a lot of trouble for that," he would later explain. "I was always a real skinny kind of kid that everybody used to overlook, and I wanted to be heard."
By his own account, he began drinking and smoking marijuana at 10 or 11. By 13, he was experimenting with cocaine and LSD. He stole from his parents to support his habit.
His disputes with his mother escalated into "semi-hysterical scenarios" in which the two of them would scramble around the house screaming at each other, according to a report by the California Youth Authority.
While their arguments raged, Bob Lisker would often sit watching television with the family dog in his lap.
"Usually, at some point in this mother-son contest, either Bruce or his mother would solicit Mr. Lisker's involvement, psychologically forcing him to be the judge in a 'courtroom' game," the Youth Authority report said.
