Prisoner Gets Death Penalty for 2012 Halloween Night Murder

BEVERLY GROVE, CA — A prisoner who arranged the 2012 murder of a witness against him in a robbery case was sentenced to death today. Michael Thomas, 50, was convicted of murder Sept. 8 for the killing of 42-year-old Erik Poltorak.

Superior Court Judge Robert J. Perry upheld the jury's recommendation of the death penalty on Friday.

Judge Perry denied a motion for a new trial and an automatic motion for a reduced sentence. In addition to convicting Thomas of murder last week, jurors found true special circumstances allegations of killing a witness and lying in wait.

The victim, Poltorak, had been burglarized on Aug. 13, 2011. He was a witness who planned to testify against Thomas in that invasion robbery case.

The three who Thomas coerced into murdering Poltorak are also serving time in prison. They include gunman Allen Williams, 23 years old with no prior criminal record at the time of the crime. Thomas's niece, Jessicha Thomas, was 20 years old at the time and also had no criminal record, and Yvonne Keith, 49-years-old at the time of the murder, who also pressured the other two into committing the murder.

Williams is serving a life sentence without the chance of parole. Jessicha Thomas testified against her uncle, Michael Thomas, in exchange for a leniency agreement for second-degree murder. Yvonne Keith is also serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

On Oct. 31, 2012, Poltorak was shot to death on his doorstep in Beverly Grove.

At the beginning of the trial's penalty phase, Thomas asked his attorneys not to defend him against the death penalty.

"I don't care for anyone to know about my life ... to go into detail about my upbringing, my family," Thomas, who spent time in juvenile detention, told Judge Robert J. Perry. Thomas asked that he be excused from court during the penalty phase, and Perry allowed him to be taken back to jail over the objection of prosecutors.

During his opening statement of the penalty phase, Deputy District Attorney Bobby Zoumberakis played a 911 call in which a co-worker who arrived at Poltorak's house and found him shot in the face and back of the head sounded hysterical and was hyperventilating.

She tied the murder to Poltorak's pending court appearance, telling the 911 dispatcher, "I'm sure he did it, he did it," of the man charged in the robbery case, without citing Thomas by name.

Poltorak "left behind a 15-year-old daughter who suffered from autism," Zoumberakis said, telling the six-man, six-woman jury they would hear evidence of the impact of the crime on her life.

"She was 9 years old when he was killed ... she can't talk about it to this day," Zoumberakis said.

Zoumberakis said Thomas manipulated his three co-defendants to carry out Poltorak's killing and had a long history of criminal and violent acts, including threats to Culver City police officers, a stabbing and using a shank in jail.

"This is the type of conduct and this is the type of (individual) that warrants it," Zoumberakis told the jury, asking them to recommend the death penalty rather than life in prison without the possibility of parole. A decision which both the jury and judge upheld.

City News Service contributed to this report. Shutterstock Image