Trial on body in suitcase finally starts

Seven years after a suitcase carrying the body of Pearla Louis floated to the surface of San Francisco Bay along the Embarcadero, a city prosecutor asked a jury Monday to convict the victim’s boyfriend of murder in a “classic case of a man who physically abuses women.”

Lee Bell, 55, killed the 52-year-old Louis after nearly two years of domestic violence, said Assistant District Attorney Michael Swart in his opening remarks in San Francisco Superior Court. The trial had been repeatedly delayed as Bell changed attorneys, claiming they were unfit to represent him, and as his own ability to participate in the proceedings was questioned.

The slaying of Louis, Swart said, “was the result of his continuing propensity to commit acts of domestic violence against his partners.”

Louis was last seen alive May 16, 2010, by a desk clerk at the Harcourt Hotel on Larkin Street in the Tenderloin neighborhood, where Bell was staying. Bell was seen talking to Louis in an angry manner that day, Swart said, and the next day surveillance video from another residential hotel showed him retrieving a suitcase that matched the one that held Louis’ body.

The suitcase was discovered a day later, on the morning of May 18, by a San Francisco resident who had been walking with his young niece on the Embarcadero near Folsom Street.

Swart said Bell’s history of domestic violence, dating to 1995, showed he was more than capable of killing Louis. They had met in 2008, and Louis was soon in and out of the hospital for injuries allegedly caused by Bell — facial fractures, black eyes, fractured ribs.

Bell’s attorney, Malcolm Smith, said that while there was “no excuse” for Bell’s history of violence toward women, “it has nothing to do with this trial.”

“This history of domestic violence proves suspicion,” he said. “It doesn’t prove guilt.”

Stating that “suitcases tend to look alike,” the defense attorney said the suitcase possessed by Lee in the surveillance video was not the one that held Louis’ body. He said the autopsy findings “will tell you that the killer was not Mr. Bell,” but did not elaborate in his opening statement.

Louis struggled with drug addiction and was homeless at the time of her death. But her son, Kareem Marshall, who sat near the front of the courtroom with his two sisters, said she had been getting her life on track before she died.

The last time he saw her, Marshall said, was May 9, 2010 — Mother’s Day — and she had been baptized that day. She called him once more on the day she was last seen, he said, and left him a voice mail asking whether he was going to church that morning.

But Marshall had been asleep, and the staff at the respite center where Louis was receiving treatment said she told them she was going to see Bell.

“I’ve been dealing with that for seven years,” Marshall said outside court. “I feel like I didn’t protect her.”

Swart said a nurse at the respite center begged Louis not to see Bell. In March 2010, Bell had essentially told a social worker that he was going to kill Louis, the prosecutor said.

At the end of April, he said, Bell began obsessively calling the center where Louis was staying, so much so that the center’s staff made a note to never allow him into the facility.

But on the day she was last seen, Louis told the staff at the center that she wanted to see Bell to get money back from him. The next day, when she hadn’t returned, the staff filed a missing-person report.

Before opening statements could even begin Monday, Bell had another outburst.

“I need to be heard correctly,” he told Judge Carol Yaggy, as courtroom sheriff ’s deputies stood at the ready.

“I’ve been asking for seven years. You will not have a fair trial without all the evidence.”

Yaggy reasoned with him, telling him he had the opportunity to be present in court, and Bell responded, “You’re not treating me with respect.

“All I want is for my attorney to hear me,” he said. “Am I speaking English?”

Outside court, Marshall said he had made peace with Bell and his antics, and was happy the trial had finally begun.

“We expected it to be long, but we didn’t think it was going to be seven years,” he said. “I’m just happy we got to this place. This is going to be the closure we need.”