Mary Ellen Samuels was convicted in Los Angeles County in 1994 of two murders that she arranged but did not carry out herself. The first victim was her estranged husband, Robert Samuels, who died in Northridge in December 1988. The second was James Bernstein, the young man who had set the first killing in motion for her and who died in Ventura County in June 1989, after she asked two other men to silence him. A jury found her guilty of first-degree murder on both counts, found the financial gain and multiple-murder special circumstances true, and voted for death on each murder. The California Supreme Court affirmed the judgment in its entirety in 2005. In 2020 a federal court conditionally granted her petition and vacated the death sentence, with the convictions left in place.
The evidence at trial came largely from a friend to whom Samuels spoke about both plans and from one of the men who admitted taking part in the second killing.
Mary Ellen and Robert Samuels were married and ran a restaurant together. Robert Samuels was 40 when he died, according to Oxygen. The opinion records that Mary Ellen Samuels filed for divorce on October 31, 1986. The defense case at trial was that the couple separated earlier that month, on October 3, 1986. After the filing the two stayed on cordial terms, and she kept working at the restaurant they still owned together.
By the autumn of 1988 the relationship had cooled. On October 31, 1988, about two months before his death, Robert Samuels met his divorce attorney. The opinion says he wanted to take over the running of the restaurant, because he was out of work, and to bring the spousal support he paid below $1,200 a month. The change was never filed, because the attorney was waiting for him to complete paperwork.
The prosecution built its case on that timeline. A reduction in support and a loss of the restaurant would have cut into the income Mary Ellen Samuels depended on, whereas his death left her with his insurance money and a share of the estate. The jury accepted the prosecution's theory of a financial motive and found the financial gain special circumstance true. The defense told a different story.
James Bernstein was a young man who was dating Samuels's daughter. The daughter had met him at a party in the spring of 1986, according to the opinion, and the two became friends. Mary Ellen Samuels testified that she began socializing with him in the later part of 1986.
According to the testimony of Anne Hambly, a friend of Samuels, her friend had begun asking people to kill her husband in 1987 and had made a number of attempts before Bernstein agreed. Hambly testified that Samuels told Bernstein that her husband had abused her daughter, and that this angered him. Hambly's evidence was that about a month before the killing Bernstein said Robert Samuels should be "taken care of permanently." Bernstein asked an acquaintance, who was also his employer, whether he knew anyone who could "take care of it," and the acquaintance gave him the telephone number of a man named Mike Silva.
Hambly also testified that Samuels told her she had given Bernstein money roughly six months before the killing. Bernstein later told the same acquaintance that the matter had been "taken care of" and that he had received money from Samuels to pay Silva. According to his later statement to another friend, David Navarro, he had kept part of the money and paid the rest to Silva. The court admitted that statement as a statement against Bernstein's own penal interest.
Mike Silva was dead by the time of the trial. The trial court limited what the jury heard about the circumstances of his death. The opinion treats his name only as the person Bernstein used and as the lead that police followed after an anonymous call.
Robert Samuels died in Northridge. The California Supreme Court's opinion places the discovery of his death on December 9, 1988, and Oxygen gives the same date.
The testimony that links Samuels to the death comes mostly from Hambly and from Navarro. Hambly told the jury that on the night of December 9 Samuels said she could not believe "it had finally happened" and acknowledged that she had paid Bernstein. Navarro testified that on December 8 the daughter had telephoned him and said "it's done." The opinion does not describe any charge, plea or grant of immunity for the daughter, and Oxygen reported that no charges were ever brought against her.
The finances after her husband's death were the core of the prosecution's motive evidence. Samuels collected on several insurance policies totaling more than $240,000. She kept her husband's car, received about $6,000 in his uncashed payroll checks and refinanced the family home for about $160,000. The restaurant was sold in early 1989, and she kept roughly $70,000 of the proceeds. Oxygen reported a larger figure for the main life insurance policy, which it put at $500,000.
The opinion records that she began living a lavish life after his death, and the prosecution used that to show motive. On appeal she argued that the evidence of her spending and conduct was unfairly prejudicial. The Supreme Court held that the evidence of her lifestyle was relevant to her financial motive for killing her husband. It found that some other character evidence had been admitted by mistake, namely evidence about her manner of dress and one gesture, but held the mistakes harmless in light of the strength of the rest of the case.
In the first months, the inquiry made little progress. Oxygen reported that detectives learned of the divorce and of the insurance policy, and that the insurer paid. The leads they followed, including a dispute with the family restaurant business and a tax matter, led nowhere.
On May 1, 1989, Navarro made an anonymous call to a Los Angeles police officer. He gave Silva's name, a telephone number that Bernstein had used, and the names of Samuels and Bernstein. A homicide detective, George Daley, located Silva and spoke to him. Oxygen reported that Samuels and Bernstein were each questioned on the same night in May and that neither confessed.
By the summer of 1989 Bernstein had become afraid. The opinion records that in late May and June he told a friend that he felt remorse and feared being caught, and that he wanted to confess. By the end of June he was ready to go to the police. On June 26, 1989, he told his older brother that he was frightened and was the only person who could expose Mary Ellen. In the weeks before, at Samuels's request, he had moved in with Hambly and her partner, Paul Gaul. He told the manager of his own apartment that he was leaving town to avoid the police.
The prosecution's case was that Samuels came to see Bernstein as the one witness who could name her. Gaul testified that between March and April 1989 Hambly introduced Samuels to him. Samuels told him that Bernstein was blackmailing her over her part in her husband's death. In a later conversation she asked Gaul directly to help kill Bernstein and offered payment. Gaul said that she spoke to him about it five to ten times and discussed payment on two to four occasions. He also testified that she told him she had paid for her husband's death.
Before leaving on a trip to Cancun, Mexico, Samuels telephoned Gaul and said she wanted Bernstein dead before she came home. She offered $5,000, or forgiveness of a loan she had made to Hambly. Gaul brought in Darryl Ray Edwards, who agreed to do it for $5,000. The opinion spells the second man's name "Darryl"; Oxygen printed it as "Darrell."
James Bernstein was killed on June 27, 1989. The California Supreme Court's opinion attributes the act to Gaul and Edwards, who afterward told Hambly what they had done. Gaul told others afterward that Bernstein died because "he talked too much."
Hambly then telephoned Samuels in Cancun and used a prearranged code, a remark about speaking to her sister, which told her that the matter was finished and that she could safely return. The code is part of the evidence that the jury weighed on the question of whether Samuels had directed the killing.
Oxygen reported that a check for $1,500 led police to Paul Gaul and Darryl Ray Edwards, that Gaul confessed, and that both men pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in return for their testimony against Mary Ellen Samuels. The article gives the sentence for each as 15 years to life. It adds that Gaul was paroled in 2009.
The California Supreme Court's opinion confirms the central points: Gaul testified for the prosecution "pursuant to a plea agreement," and the court called him "one of Bernstein's admitted killers." The opinion does not state the charges, pleas or sentences for Gaul or Edwards, and it records that Edwards did not testify. Silva was dead before the trial. No charge against any of the other people named in the opinion is on record.
Oxygen reported that Mary Ellen Samuels was arrested on January 26, 1990. She was charged in Los Angeles County with the murders of both men, and the case was tried in the Superior Court in Van Nuys under the case number PA002269. The counts, as the California Supreme Court describes the verdicts, were first-degree murder of Robert Samuels and of James Bernstein, solicitation of each murder, and conspiracy to murder each man. The jury found true the financial gain special circumstance as to the murder of Robert Samuels, and the multiple-murder special circumstance.
According to Oxygen, the trial began in April 1994. The prosecution called Hambly and Gaul as principal witnesses and offered the statements Bernstein had made to Navarro and others before his death. Navarro's account of what Bernstein told him was held admissible as a statement against penal interest. Statements Bernstein made to two other friends were not covered by the exception for statements made in furtherance of a conspiracy, because they were made after the killing of Robert Samuels. The Supreme Court held that any error in admitting them was harmless.
The defense called Samuels herself. She testified that the marriage had been stormy and that her husband had been abusive. She said she had thought of reconciling but gave up the idea after she learned that he had abused their daughter. She denied wanting him dead, denied asking anyone to kill him, and said that her finances were sound in 1987. She said Bernstein had never threatened or blackmailed her, that she did not want him dead, and that she felt terrible when she heard of his death.
The daughter also testified for her mother. Oxygen reported that she did so against the advice of her own lawyer. Her evidence was that she knew of no plot, and that her father had abused her and that this was why she moved out. She told the jury that she had spoken to friends and a school counselor but never reported it to the police and did not tell her mother until after the separation. Oxygen added that members of her father's family denied the allegation. The jury's guilty verdicts show that it did not accept the defense account of the events.
On July 1, 1994, the jury found Samuels guilty of first-degree murder on both counts, according to Oxygen. The jury found the special circumstances true. The penalty phase followed. The prosecution called one witness, Robert Samuels's sister, who gave evidence of the effect of the loss. The defense called jail staff, other inmates, relatives and former friends, who described her as kind to other inmates and asked the jury to spare her life. One of them, a deputy, agreed on cross-examination that Samuels could be manipulative. The jury returned a verdict of death on each murder.
The trial court denied the defense motions for a new trial and to reduce the penalty verdict. In September 1994, according to Oxygen, Superior Court Judge Michael R. Hoff followed the jury's decision and sentenced Samuels to death.
A death sentence in California is reviewed automatically by the state's Supreme Court. The case was docketed as S042278, and the court appointed Joel Levine to represent Samuels, with the Attorney General's office for the People. The opinion, written by Justice Brown, was filed on June 27, 2005, and published at 36 Cal.4th 96. FindLaw's summary describes the appeal as one in which a death row inmate raised 26 points of error. The opinion was modified on denial of rehearing on September 21, 2005, and the United States Supreme Court denied certiorari on April 17, 2006.
The court rejected every claim. It held that any error in denying discovery of police personnel records was harmless, and that the trial court acted within its discretion on the files of the detective. It held that the questioning of prospective jurors was adequate and that sequestered individual questioning on death qualification, which an earlier decision had required, was no longer demanded after Proposition 115. It found no federal error in excusing one prospective juror for cause, and it upheld the removal of a seated juror who asked to be excused, said she could not act on a death verdict even if she thought it appropriate, and told the court she was "not in a good place to continue."
On the claim of judicial bias, the court found the claim waived by failure to object and, in any event, unsupported by the record. It wrote that "a possibly erroneous ruling on evidence does not establish prejudice of the trial judge." It found no misconduct in the prosecutor's refusal to grant immunity to a defense witness, because a defendant cannot force the prosecution to grant immunity, and in any event that witness's evidence was cumulative of another witness's. It held that testimony about a recorded conversation was not barred by the best evidence rule, and that the instructions on reasonable doubt and circumstantial evidence were sound.
The court concluded that the errors it found, including the improper admission of some character evidence, were harmless individually and together, because the other evidence was overwhelming, including the testimony of Hambly and Gaul. Its disposition reads: "We affirm the judgment in its entirety."
Samuels then challenged her death sentence in the federal courts. On March 9, 2020, in Samuels v. Espinoza (Case No. CV 10-3225 SJO), United States District Judge S. James Otero of the Central District of California entered a judgment conditionally granting her petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The judgment provides that the death sentence in People v. Mary Ellen Samuels, Case No. PA002269, Los Angeles County Superior Court, Van Nuys, "shall be VACATED," and that within 120 days the State must "either grant Petitioner a new penalty trial or vacate the death sentence and resentence Petitioner in accordance with California law and the United States Constitution." The court's reasons are not on record. The relief concerns the sentence only.
The respondent named in the case was the warden of a women's prison in central California.
What happened after the 120-day period is not on record. An undated Oxygen article states that her sentence "was commuted to life in prison without the chance of parole," without a date or an authority; no later court sentence is on record. Oxygen's 2018 article, written before the federal ruling, said she was 71, had been in prison for almost 24 years, and was one of 20 women on California's death row.
Her defense at trial was that she had not wanted her husband dead, had not asked anyone to kill him, and had nothing to do with Bernstein's death. The jury heard that account, and the prosecution's, and found her guilty on every count. The Supreme Court described the evidence against her as extensive.
The facts that the courts did not decide are limited. The opinion does not name the person who carried out the first killing as a convicted defendant; Silva, who Bernstein said was involved, was dead before trial, and the court restricted testimony about his death. Only Oxygen has reported the sentences of Gaul and Edwards. The size of the life insurance policy differs between the opinion, which totals more than $240,000 in payments, and Oxygen, which gives $500,000.
Robert Samuels's sister spoke at the penalty phase and was the only witness the prosecution called there. Her daughter, who according to Oxygen was never charged, gave evidence for her mother at trial.
October 3, 1986: date of separation given by the defense.
October 31, 1986: Mary Ellen Samuels files for divorce.
1987: according to a witness, she begins asking others to kill her husband.
October 31, 1988: Robert Samuels meets his divorce attorney about the restaurant and spousal support.
December 1988: Robert Samuels dies in Northridge; the opinion dates the discovery to December 9.
Early 1989: the restaurant is sold.
May 1, 1989: an anonymous call to police names Silva, Bernstein and Samuels.
June 27, 1989: James Bernstein is killed.
January 26, 1990: Samuels is arrested (Oxygen).
April 1994: trial begins (Oxygen).
July 1, 1994: guilty verdicts (Oxygen); the jury returns death verdicts on both murders.
September 1994: Judge Michael R. Hoff sentences her to death (Oxygen).
June 27, 2005: the California Supreme Court affirms.
September 21, 2005: rehearing denied.
April 17, 2006: certiorari denied.
March 9, 2020: federal judgment conditionally vacates the death sentence.