Videotape Has Murder Defendant Describing Victim’s Plea for Lives

SANTA ANA — Moments before Gregory A. Sturm allegedly shot and killed three former colleagues at a Tustin auto parts store, one of the victims pleaded with him not to shoot them, according to a videotaped confession played for a Superior Court jury Tuesday.

In a videotaped interview with two Tustin police investigators, Sturm recalled that one victim, Chad Chadwick, told him: “You don’t have do this. . . . You can get help. Please don’t do this. Think about what you’re doing.”

But the plea didn’t have an effect on the 21-year-old Tustin man, who admitted shooting Chadwick, 22, Russell Williams, 21, and Darrell Esgar, 22 during a robbery at the Super Shops auto parts store on Aug. 20, 1990.

All three victims were bound with tape and were sitting in chairs when they were slain.

Sturm told investigators that he remembered his last victim, Esgar, “looked at me and was crying, then I started crying. He put his head down and I remember shooting . . . and seeing blood.”

Sturm is charged with three counts of murder. If convicted, he could face the death penalty.

Deputy Public Defender William G. Kelley has conceded that his client shot the three men, but he contends that Sturm had a cocaine habit and was high at the time of the robbery, which he carried out to get more money to buy drugs.

As the videotape was played for the jury, Sturm sat hunched at the counsel table with his head lowered, apparently weeping.

Sturm, who was fired from the store days before the robbery, said he never intended to shoot the victims.

“I just got scared and shot all of them,” he said.

Prosecutors contend he made off with about $1,100.