O Sullivan

Two days after a jury urged that Mark Scott Thornton be sent to California's Death Row to await execution, the convicted murderer said Wednesday that he is sorry for slaying Westlake nurse Kellie O'Sullivan and thankful that jurors sentenced him to die. "I'm sorry for what happened," Thornton told The Times in his first public comments since the 1993 murder. "It was an extreme accident. Nothing I would have ever dreamed of doing. . . . It came out of the blue. I can't believe it happened.

After only three hours of testimony, prosecutors on Tuesday rested their case for putting convicted murderer Mark Scott Thornton to death, calling as witnesses seven sheriff's deputies and one of the defendant's former girlfriends. The deputies testified that razors have been found in Thornton's jail cell three times since his September, 1993, arrest in connection with the death of Westlake nurse Kellie O'Sullivan.

A Ventura County jury, deliberating for less than five hours Monday, convicted a 20-year-old Thousand Oaks man of murder and a special circumstance that could send him to the gas chamber for last year's slaying of Westlake nurse Kellie O'Sullivan. Mark Scott Thornton, whom prosecutors branded a cold-blooded killer but defense attorneys called an immature and impulsive young man, sat stoically as Superior Court Judge Charles R. McGrath read guilty verdicts to the 13 counts he faced.

Before Kellie O'Sullivan's death, Mark Scott Thornton was a homeless teen-ager who slept wherever he could--in his beat-up old car and at a low-budget motel, defense witnesses testified Thursday. The witnesses, including Thornton's 68-year-old grandmother, described Thornton's life as bleak and bereft of any opportunities. The 20-year-old defendant is charged with murder and could be sentenced to the gas chamber in connection with the nurse's death Sept. 14, 1993.

Jurors on Monday finally heard Mark Scott Thornton proclaim his innocence in the slaying death of Westlake nurse Kellie O'Sullivan, but his words came in a year-old videotape, not the witness stand. In the Sept. 20, 1993, interview with a Ventura County sheriff's sergeant, Thornton vigorously defended himself against suggestions that he had harmed the nurse even though he had been caught driving her truck. His statement came six days before her body was found in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Moving outside the sterile confines of the courtroom, the jury hearing Mark Scott Thornton's murder trial on Tuesday visited the grotto in the Santa Monica Mountains where slain Westlake nurse Kellie O'Sullivan's body was found last year. As the 20-year-old defendant stood close by, jurors got their first look at a shady spot that has dominated testimony during the first four weeks of the Thousand Oaks man's trial.

Despite earlier reservations against allowing jurors to see pictures of Kellie O'Sullivan's badly decomposed body, a judge allowed two gruesome autopsy photographs to be shown Monday at Mark Scott Thornton's murder trial. Superior Court Judge Charles R. McGrath's decision came over vehement objections from attorneys for the 20-year-old defendant, who prosecutors say shot and killed the nurse Sept. 14, 1993, and stole her truck.

Under intense cross-examination, a ballistics expert testifying against murder defendant Mark Scott Thornton conceded Wednesday that Westlake nurse Kellie O'Sullivan might not have been on her knees when she was fatally shot. A day earlier, Paul Dougherty had said that the nurse was on her knees and unable to put up a struggle when she was shot under leafy tree limbs in the Santa Monica Mountains.

As tears flowed down the face of Kellie O'Sullivan's mother, a Ventura County evidence technician Monday showed a jury the bullet-torn smock and T-shirt the Westlake nurse was wearing the day she was shot three times. Sharlene Cunningham, the nurse's mother, calmly wiped the tears away and turned to a pair of reporters near the front row of the courtroom. "That was white," she said of the brown T-shirt held up for everyone to see.

Accused Thousand Oaks murderer Mark Scott Thornton developed an obsession with scrubbing his hands clean in the days after Westlake nurse Kellie O'Sullivan's shooting death, his ex-girlfriend testified Tuesday. "He was scratching the skin off them, like they were really dirty," Stephanie Campbell, 17, told the jury hearing Thornton's death-penalty trial. "But it wasn't dirt above the skin," she added. "It was below the skin."