Prosecutor to Ernie Scherer: “Did you Give Your Mother Time to say Your First Name Before you hit her?”

On cross-examination, the prosecutor in the Ernie Scherer murder trial asked:  “Good afternoon, Mr. Scherer Did you give your mother the opportunity to say your name before you hit her the first time?”

Alameda County Prosecutor Michael Nieto made reference to the bludgeoning to death of his mother Charlene Abendroth, followed by his father Ernie Scherer Jr. in their Castlewood Country Club home in March 2008. 

He continued with the intense line of questioning.

“Did you give her the opportunity to ask why?” Nieto said in response to the defendant’s assertion that he did not hit his mother.

Scherer III is accused of killing both his parents in an attempt to obtain a one million dollar-plus inheritance.  Scherer III, a poker player, had fallen into deep debt, mostly a result of mounting gambling losses.

In his cross-examination, Nieto pressed Scherer III on various lies following the slayings, the Mercury News reported. 

Before the jury, Nieto began a chart of lies by Scherer III that the Mercury News expects to grow longer Wednesday.

In the wake of the killings, Scherer III said he holed up in a room rental across the state border in Oregon and drank heavily -- an explanation, he said, for some of his Internet searches of countries that do not extradite to the United States.

He had split off from his family amid suspicions of guilt.

"I dealt with my grief and stress during that time kind of drowning myself in Jack Daniels or Jim Beam. I was sitting in this apartment room, cut off from the world, consuming enormous quantities of alcohol," he testified.

"I would go online and Google whatever came to my mind. That's one of the things I looked at."

His refusal to engage Alameda County investigators -- who suspected him early -- owed to the advice of lawyers, he said.

The trial is expected to end some time this month. 

- Christopher Costigan, Gambling911.com Publisher