May 27--The call came into Herbert Tracy White's cellphone after midnight.
White, a former cocaine addict turned Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous sponsor, had a soft spot for people in need, so he hopped out of bed, put on some clothes and his Lakers cap and said goodbye to his wife, telling her some people he'd met needed help.
She was used to his late-night phone calls from people asking for favors.
In the early morning hours of Nov. 28, 2010, White picked up Edward and Melissa Hope Garcia, whom he had met days earlier at a Chase bank in Hollywood and suggested they call him if they were ever serious about getting sober. He drove them to skid row and paid to check them into the Continental Hotel, room 66.
"What proceeded that night," a prosecutor told jurors Wednesday, "was truly dark and sadistic."
When a maid showed up to the clean the room the next day, she found a backpack left behind and the bed stripped of the sheets. She asked her manager to come look.
Inside, he found White's severed arms still bound by duct tape. Under the bed, he saw White's torso covered in scratches and small punctures. The Lakers hat was positioned in the center of the bed, "like a tombstone," Deputy Dist. Atty. John McKinney said.
During opening statements Wednesday in the murder trial of Edward Garcia, McKinney told jurors that the couple killed White as part of a "long-held fantasy of dismembering" a body, in what he called a "ritualistic killing."
"Blood-shedding and bloodletting was part of the motivation for this crime," he said.
But Edward's attorney, Deputy Public Defender Haydeh Takasugi, described a more complicated scene for jurors, saying her client had used two baggies of meth -- which, she said, White brought to the hotel -- at the time of the slayings.
After running into the couple again after meeting at the bank, she said White offered a proposition of sorts.
"I couldn't stop thinking about you guys," he told them, before turning to Melissa and adding, "I couldn't stop thinking of you."
He'd called Melissa his girlfriend to the hotel manager, the attorney said. And sexual lubricant -- the same type found at White's house -- was found in the hotel room, Takasugi said.
She told the jurors that the dismemberment happened after White died or perimortem -- near the time of death -- and said that when Garcia admitted to killing White when he was interviewed by investigators he "expressed regret."
For criminal court news in Los Angeles, follow @marisagerber.
Times staff writer Veronica Rocha contributed to this report.
UPDATE
3:53 p.m.: This post has been updated throughout with details about the opening statements of the trial.
This post was originally published at 7:25 a.m.
