Attacker ‘begged for a gun’

Press, 28 October 1982, Page 9

Attacker ‘begged for a gun’

NZPA-Reuter Los Angeles

A Scotsman, Arthur Jackson, had begged for a gun so he could shoot himself after he had been convicted of the attempted murder of film actress, Teresa Saldana, his lawyer said yesterday. Jackson, aged 47, who has a history of mental problems, made his request in a 12-page hand-written document to the trial judge which was a petition for a selfimposed execution, said the lawyer, Steven Moyer.

He asked to be allowed to die in Cellblock D in the abandoned Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco Bay, said Mr Moyer. Jackson, who once lived in Aberdeen, faces up to 13 years imprisonment after being convicted of the attempted murder of the actress, aged 27, outside her Los Angeles home last March. She was stabbed three times in the chest and cut on the arms and legs before being rescued by a water delivery man.

Miss Saldana sobbed quietly in the Superior Court while the jury of eight women and four men announced its verdict. “Nothing can erase the horror of what happened to me,” she told reporters.

“I must go on for the rest of my days carrying the memory of this hideous attack,” said Miss Saldana, who appeared in the films “Raging Bull" and “Defiance.” Jackson, who receives a British pension because he is unfit for work, was alleged by the prosecution to have stalked Miss Saldana and to have tried to contact her after seeing her in “Defiance,” in which she played the girlfriend of a seaman who fought a city gang. A psychiatrist, Dr Ronald Markman, told the court during the two weeks and a half trial that Jackson regarded the film as portraying his own life.

While in jail, Jackson wrote a 129-page letter to Miss Saldana in which he said that he wanted to be killed in Cellblock D of Alcatraz.

He said that this was because a convicted robber named Joseph Kretzer died there in 1946 while leading a prison rebellion.

Jackson, who is due to be sentenced on November 23, had refused to allow Mr Moyer to plead not guilty by reason of insanity on his behalf.