Prosecutor Says Calls Prove Wife Killed Man

Closing a murder trial laden with the themes of sex, money and lies, prosecutors said Wednesday that telephone calls made during an alleged home invasion robbery prove that Jeanie Adair clubbed her husband to death three years ago with a baseball bat.

Adair says a robber dressed as a gas company worker forced his way into the couple’s Sylmar condominium, then bound, gagged, terrorized and beat her for hours as he gathered loot. Adair told authorities the invader killed her husband when he came home for lunch.

But she made three telephone calls during the time she claims she was bound and gagged, Deputy Dist. Atty. Marsh Goldstein told jurors during closing arguments.

“Any one of the three of those phone calls prove that the defendant’s version is a lie. You can’t be tied up and still make phone calls,” he said. “Any one of those three proves that she murdered Robert Adair.”

Jurors are set to begin deliberations today after the defense attorney gives his closing arguments in the trial that began Sept. 28.

Richard Plotin, Adair’s lawyer, said outside court that the phone calls don’t prove anything, because Adair did not make them.

However, secretaries at her husband’s office and the office of her former lover, Encino physician Michael Shapiro, testified that they took calls from Adair during the time she said she was bound.

The real key to the case, Plotin said, is that Adair had her own blood on her, not her husband’s. Yet evidence shows that the killer would have been covered in Robert Adair’s blood, the lawyer said.

He asserts that an ex-convict committed the crime on orders from Melinda “Mindy” Shapiro, the former wife of the doctor with whom Jeanie Adair was having an affair while they were both married.

Throughout the trial, Plotin has tried to portray Mindy Shapiro as a violent woman, crazed with jealousy, who frequently lied about her identity to get information or records.

She has remained somewhat of a mystery to the jury, however. Plotin questioned others about her, but she was never called to testify.

Plotin maintains that his client is the victim of a vendetta by the victim’s family, as well as a blundering police investigation.

Plotin introduced a report Wednesday by a psychologist who said that Jeanie Adair suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and that inconsistencies in her statements to police were the result of a blow to the head.

A prosecution expert testified that such a blow might cause someone to forget an event but would not cause them to give inconsistent accounts.

In statements to police and friends, Goldstein said, Adair gave conflicting stories of where and how she was tied, how she freed herself, and where she and the killer were when her husband came home.