Sent to a shootout at the Anaheim home of a longtime Orange County judge, police found Jeffrey Ferguson sitting in a flower pot.
“Just shoot me,” Ferguson told the officer who approached with a less-than-lethal shotgun pointed at the judge.
Witnesses recounted the scene at Ferguson's home at a preliminary hearing Thursday, where a judge ruled there was probable cause to believe Ferguson had murdered his wife, Sheryl, after they argued over money during dinner in August.
Aug. 3 to report that his father had just shot his mother, Anaheim police officers testified at the hearing.
That night, standing handcuffed outside his home as officers tried to revive his wife inside, Ferguson let out a string of expletives before saying, “What did I do? “My son will hate me forever,” Officer Joshua Juntilla of the Anaheim Police Department testified.
“Can you make my son come here and punch me in the face?” the officer said Ferguson asked. “I deserve it. I have everything coming.”
Crying and with his breath smelling of alcohol, Ferguson apologized to his son, who had witnessed the killing, and asked if his wife was dead, Juntilla testified. The officer recalled Ferguson saying he was just like the criminals he once prosecuted as an Orange County deputy prosecutor.
Inside the Ferguson home, police found Sheryl lying on her back near a sliding glass door, shot in the abdomen. A Glock pistol was on the tiled kitchen floor. In the crowded family room was an overturned leather chair, with a bullet lodged in the back and blood around the entry point. There was a single shell casing on the carpet.
Anaheim Police Det. Michael Nguyen interviewed Phillip that night at the police station. He was wearing pajama pants, a t-shirt and no shoes; His hands were covered in dried blood from trying to revive his mother, Nguyen said.
According to the detective, that same night Phillip had gone with his father and mother to dinner at El Cholo, where his parents resumed their eternal argument about money. His father had shaped his hand into a gun and pointed it at his mother, who left the restaurant, the younger Ferguson told investigators. The three then returned home and watched “Breaking Bad” together in the family room, as they did every night.
After the episode ended, her mother began arguing again about money. Phillip got up to leave. When he reached the back sliding door, he heard his mother say, “Why don't you point a real gun at me?”
Phillip turned and saw his father holding the .40 caliber Glock he always carried in a holster on his ankle. Without saying a word, his father shot his mother, he said. Phillip jumped on a couch and grabbed his father's gun, thinking he could use it to kill himself, he told police. Ferguson then told Phillip to call 911.
Phillip said his parents had often fought over the family's finances, but the arguments had never before become physical. He believed Ferguson may have shot his mother in a drunken accident, and noted that his father had fired a bullet several years earlier through a bathroom tile floor. Police confiscated 47 guns and more than 26,000 rounds of ammunition from the home, prosecutors said at the time of the judge's arrest.
At the end of Thursday's hearing, Ferguson's attorney, T. Edward Welbourn, asked Superior Court Judge Eleanor Hunter to dismiss the murder charge, noting that his client's son, the only eyewitness to the killing, said who believed it was an accident.
Hunter disagreed. “While I appreciate the son's opinion that this was accidental (bless him), he is in a horrible position,” he said. Hunter said the evidence showed Ferguson understood the danger inherent in pointing a gun at another person.
Hunter, who heard the case in Los Angeles because of conflicts raised by Ferguson's ties to the Orange County court, ruled that he had seen enough evidence for Ferguson to be tried for murder.
Ferguson remains free on $1 million bail with GPS and alcohol monitoring restrictions.
