Wife Killed Husband Over 12-Year Affair, Court Told

A Tarzana woman shot and killed her millionaire husband in anger because he had been having an affair for 12 years and because she feared his plans to sell his import-export business would decrease the value of his estate, a prosecutor alleged Monday in Van Nuys Superior Court.

The attorney for Carole Evelyn Mellinger argued in his opening statement that his client was simply drunk and thought she was shooting a burglar when she fired four shots into her husband, Brainerd, in their posh hillside home Jan. 24.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this case has all the makings of a finely written soap opera but the tragedy is, it all happened,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Ann Korban told jurors.

Korban said that although the couple had a premarital agreement specifying that Carole Mellinger, 48, would get no money if the couple divorced, she was the primary beneficiary of her husband’s will.