During 1984 Slaying, Court Is Told : Troiani ‘Not Operating on All Cylinders’

The defense in the Laura Troiani murder case continued Tuesday in Vista Superior Court with a psychiatrist testifying under cross-examination that when Troiani’s husband was killed in August, 1984, she “wasn’t operating on all cylinders,” so much so that she was unable to offer convincing lies to police when interrogated.

“She was not plugged into reality,” said Mark Mills, the primary witness in the defense strategy that Troiani, now 26, only fantasized her husband’s death and subsequently became unwittingly caught up in the plans of five Marines to kill her husband of five years, Carlo Troiani, who was 37.

The prosecution maintains that Laura Troiani coldly and calculatedly plotted her husband’s death so she could reap his insurance benefits and marry her lover.

‘A TV Fantasy’

“She was aware there were individuals involved in the plot . . . but she thought, albeit primitively, that this was a TV fantasy that could be turned off,” Mills said, adding that she “was in a twilight zone” and “neither vigorously participated (in the killing) nor vigorously tried to save her husband.”

Much of the cross-examination of Mills by Deputy Dist. Atty. Paul Pfingst in the jury trial was testy, centering on to what degree Laura Troiani was able to deliberately lie to police or whether she was “confabulating,” which Mills said was the act of filling in gaps of reality with fantasy believed to be real.

Victim Was Abusive

Also testifying for the defense Tuesday was Laura Troiani’s mother, Katherine Lewtas, who said she remembered Carlo Troiani becoming verbally abusive toward his wife when he had difficulty assemblying a bicycle for a Christmas gift in 1983.

“There were other times he yelled at her, but he knew he better not to hit her when I was around,” Lewtas said.

After the session, attorneys for both sides and Judge Gilbert Nares met in chambers to review a four-hour videotape of Laura Troiani being interviewed by a psychiatrist Friday and Monday for the prosecution to see whether the interview would be admissible.

Scheduled to testify today are a Carlsbad marriage counselor who met with the Troianis several weeks before the killing, and a social anthropologist from Rutgers University who is expected to discuss the dynamics of men in group situations.