Murder trial’s key witness now dead

In the cold-case murder trial of Donna Prentice, accused of killing her 3-year-old daughter Michelle Pulsifer in Huntington Beach 38 years ago, the most important witness of all won’t even be present.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys are expected to battle over the value of testimony by Prentice’s former boyfriend James Michael Kent, but he is no longer there to answer for it. He died of kidney shutdown and diabetes in 2005, shortly after confessing to burying Michelle’s body. He was facing murder charges as well, the result of a yearlong investigation by the district attorney’s cold case unit.

Prentice, 60, and Kent killed Pulsifer, buried her in a nearby canyon, and lied to hide the secret for decades, prosecutor Larry Yellin said.

The last thing any witness heard 3-year-old Michelle Pulsifer say was, “Hide me. Hide me,” before Prentice took her away, Yellin said.

Defense attorney Ron Brower didn’t dispute that Pulsifer died and was secretly buried, but he called Prentice a “good mother” and a victim as well: the victim of her violent and abusive boyfriend, Kent. Brower called him the one responsible for Pulsifer’s death.

“It was his idea; none of it was Donna Prentice’s idea,” he said. “When the child was discovered to be deceased, Donna Prentice fell against the wall and turned ashen white.”

Over the years that followed, Kent physically threatened Prentice, tracked her down to keep her quiet, fired a gun next to her head, brutalized numerous people and was convicted of multiple felonies and misdemeanors, Brower said.

“It was just another part of his [Kent’s] reign of terror on anyone in this life, particularly women,” he said.

It was a family mystery for decades. In 1969, 3-year-old Pulsifer vanished, and neither her mother Donna Prentice nor Kent ever let anyone know she was gone.

Early testimony introduced to jurors the unanswered questions Michelle’s father Richard Pulsifer Sr.. and her brother Richard Jr. have been living with for 38 years.

Pulsifer Sr. testified that he remembered trying to visit his children at ex-wife Prentice’s house in Huntington Beach in the late 1960s. Only his son was there, and Prentice told him Michelle was “with friends.” No amount of heated argument would get her to tell him more.

A decade later, he was subpoenaed to pay child support — on just one child, his son Richard. When he sent her a questionnaire on Michelle’s whereabouts with the help of his lawyer, she abruptly stopped asking for money and refunded his payments, he said. While he didn’t get answers then, he did get back in touch with his son, who came to live with him when he turned 18.

Pulsifer Jr. testified that his last memory of sister Michelle, in July 1969, was her asking to be hidden.

“I was in my bedroom, early morning,” he said. “She came into the room, and she was asking me to hide her. I started to put her under the covers, but my mother came and took her out of the room.”

The trial is expected to last about two weeks. Prentice faces up to five years to life in prison, according to 1969 sentencing rules.

Pulsifer’s body was never found, despite Kent showing investigators where he said he had buried it 38 years ago.