SANTA BARBARA — In a dramatic second day on the witness stand, Jesse James Hollywood denied ordering the execution of a 15-year-old West Hills boy to avenge a $1,200 drug debt owed by the boy's older half-brother.
At least a dozen times, the 29-year-old former marijuana dealer told a Santa Barbara County Superior Court jury how much he regretted the events that led to the 2000 death of Nicholas Markowitz, who was shot nine times and buried in the Santa Barbara foothills.
But prosecutor Joshua Lynn was sharply skeptical, questioning Hollywood's assertion that he had no plans for the boy after snatching him off a San Fernando Valley street and driving him to Santa Barbara.
"Why didn't you just let him out of the van?" Lynn asked, suggesting that he could have given the boy some money to help him make his way back home. "We were already driving to Santa Barbara," Hollywood responded. "I didn't think anything about it. There was no big decision-making process. It just happened. There was no plan."
Facing a possible death sentence, Hollywood is charged with kidnapping and first-degree murder. Prosecutors acknowledge he wasn't at the murder scene but contend he ordered his underlings to kill the boy. Four others already have been convicted in the slaying that was the subject of the 2007 movie "Alpha Dog."
For the first time, jurors heard details of Hollywood's flight from justice -- a five-year odyssey that took him from a trailer in the Mojave Desert to a beach town in Brazil. Along the way he spent six months crisscrossing Canada before buying a fake passport in Quebec for $2,000.
"I was laying low," he said. "I had no hope. I would never get a fair trial."
Hollywood said the media had already convicted him in the sensational case -- a feeling that he said deepened when he saw repeated accounts of the crime and the global manhunt on shows such as "America's Most Wanted."
In a calm voice that sometimes dropped to a whisper, he described the few days in August 2000 that culminated in Nicholas' killing. At times, he spoke with lawyerly caution, referring to the kidnapping as "the initial taking" and describing Markowitz being "ushered" into the van.
Over six months, Hollywood said, Markowitz's tough-guy half-brother Ben had mounted a campaign of harassment against him over the debt. Hollywood testified that Ben Markowitz had threatened him and his family, poisoned his dog, and, finally, smashed windows at the San Fernando Valley home that Hollywood was trying to sell to escape Markowitz's wrath.
