Prosecutors want Rebecca Grossman’s access to jailhouse phones revoked after she allegedly promoted criminal behavior and her team sought to interfere with jurors who convicted her of double murder.
Deputy District Attorney Ryan Gould and his colleague Jamie Castro filed a motion on Monday detailing many jailhouse talks Grossman made with her daughter and husband since her February 23 conviction for killing two young brothers in a crosswalk while driving down a residential Westlake Village street.
According to court filings, Grossman instructed her daughter, Alexis, to make public a deputy-worn body-camera video that had been sealed by the judge and to tell another individual to contact the judge regarding a fresh trial. She also supported chasing down witnesses and convincing them that their testimony was directed.
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Grossman, 60, was found guilty last month of two counts of murder, two counts of gross vehicular manslaughter, and one count of hit-and-run in the 2020 deaths of Mark and Jacob Iskander, ages 11 and 8. She faces 34 years to life in jail at her sentence.
According to Gould and Castro, two jurors stated that Paul Stuckey, a private investigator, contacted three other jurors against the judge’s order to keep jurors’ personal information private.
“This investigator did not properly identify himself, rather stating that he was a ‘private investigator for the family,'” prosecutors wrote in the motion filed Monday. The prosecutors stated that Stuckey works for Grossman, not the Iskanders or the prosecution.
The prosecutors said that the only way the investigator could have located the jurors was if he had access to their personal information, which had been sealed by Judge Joseph Brandolino, as is customary in California following a verdict. The defense may petition the court for the name of a juror if a compelling interest is demonstrated, but this was not done in this case, according to the brief.
“The only ways in which the defense could have obtained this personal juror identification information was either by photographing the jury list that was presented to counsel during jury selection or copying the names down off this same list,” the attorneys for the prosecution argued. “The defense is actively attempting to engage in jury tampering … and illegally in possession of jury personal identifying information.”
The prosecutors have asked the court for all such information to be returned.
They also urged the judge to stop Grossman from contacting the Iskanders. Nancy and Karim Iskander, the parents of the boys Grossman was convicted of murdering, informed authorities that they got a letter from her on March 13.
They also want Brandolino to relocate Grossman to a section of the jail where she has no access to phones or visitors, except for her attorneys, and her mail is reviewed.
“While in detention, the defendant immediately began using her phone privileges to engage in entirely inappropriate or potentially unlawful activities. “These calls include admissions to violating the court’s protective order regarding the disclosure of evidence on the internet and to the press,” Gould and Castro said in their petition.
“These recorded phone calls also document numerous potential criminal conspiracies, such as requests to disclose more protected discovery, discussion of various attempts to interfere with witnesses and their testimony, and attempts to influence his honor in regards to sentencing.”
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department records phone calls from prisoners detained at Twin Towers Jail, where Grossman is being kept, and other L.A. lockups.
On February 23, the day of Grossman’s conviction, she informed her daughter, “I want you to unblock the videos.”
Alexis Grossman responds: “I will.”
Rebecca Grossman’s husband, Dr. Peter Grossman, suddenly interjects: “Let us know what you want us to put out, honey. We’re going to lay it all out.”
Grossman responds: “I want you to put everything out.”
Prosecutors claim the exchange pertains to body-camera footage from a sheriff’s deputy on the scene following the incident. The video was on a website affiliated with Grossman’s defense but was withdrawn after prosecutors contacted the judge, who sealed all evidence not shown at trial.
Gould further claims that Grossman directed her husband to contact a Fox 11 news reporter to whom they transmitted the video. “Talk to her about it, is she going to play that?” Grossman said this during a conversation on February 24.
Peter Grossman responded, “Rebecca, you know, we wrote this.” I do not want you to say anything over the phone right now.”
She inquired, “Why?” That’s the truth.
As the jury deliberated last month, the judge warned Grossman against breaking a court order by exposing the film or making public any material that he had sealed and jurors had not seen. Prosecutors had requested that Grossman be remanded to jail for her behavior at the time.
In another jailhouse discussion, Grossman mentioned to her husband a board member of the Grossman Burn Center, where he is the medical director. Susan Manners, the doctor’s patient, was one of three witnesses who testified at trial that she saw Grossman’s white Mercedes SUV strike one of the boys in the crossing. Grossman complained during the phone call that her husband’s colleague had not affected Manners’ testimony.
She reportedly told her husband to have a man she identifies as Tom contact the court to request a fresh trial.
Grossman told her daughter on February 24 that “if we can get witnesses to come forward and say they were told to say things, this can get us a new trial.” She urged her daughter to locate and speak with a witness who was never called by the defense and who, according to their opening statements, saw a black car, not a white one, impact the boys.
“We have to get a real story out there about everything behind us and everything that wasn’t done and all the things that were hidden from the jury and how the media influenced the entire trial and how they were releasing all this stuff to the media, just to make me look like a monster and that we know that the jurors were influenced by it,” Grossman went on to say.
Her 19-year-old daughter responded, “I’ll do anything for you, Mom. Everything. “And so is Dad.”
Grossman told her daughter, “I was so shocked to have all twelve jurors [convicted]. They were the worst jurors. I knew they were terrible jurors. The jury selection process did not work for us at all. They were not on my side from the start. “I just knew it.”
She went on: “Every single witness has a different story. “How could there not have been reasonable doubt?”
Grossman mentioned her then-boyfriend, Scott Erickson, whose Black Mercedes SUV she had been following through the crosswalk on Triunfo Canyon Road when she hit the brothers, in a taped chat with her husband the next day, Feb. 25.
“You should call Scott Erickson and tell him to get on a video and confess,” she added, repeating her defense team’s pitch during trial.
Peter Grossman referred to his wife as a sacrificial goat, saying, “I know he needs to confess, but right now, I can’t even talk about the matter. But that guy has to know that you’re in jail for him, and it drives me insane.”
“Tell him to [make] a video and confess,” Grossman told her husband. “I have a family.”