AA Meetings Lead To Murder Trial -- Members Testify Man Confessed

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. - When Paul Cox spoke at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, the story he told was worse than most: He said he had killed two people during a drunken blackout.

That is what five AA members testified yesterday at Cox's trial. The 26-year-old carpenter is charged with stabbing two married doctors as they slept in their bed inside Cox's old house.

Cox has pleaded not guilty. Cox's lawyer, Andrew Rubin, said that if Cox committed the crime, he was temporarily insane. He could get life in prison if convicted.

The bodies of Lakshman Rao and Shanta Chervu were discovered on New Year's Day, 1989, in the Larchmont home they had bought from Cox's family in 1974.

Rubin said Cox, who lives with his parents, had had nightmares in which the victims' faces were replaced by those of his parents.

The AA members testified that Cox told them of the slayings as early as 1990. Two said Cox told them he had found bloody clothes the morning after the killings. A third said Cox thought he had killed his parents.

Cox wasn't arrested until last year, when an AA member - not one of the five who testified - went to police. Police then found that Cox's fingerprints matched a set found in the Chervus' house.

The AA members who testified didn't come forward until they were subpoenaed. They were identified in court only by their first initial, in keeping with the group's tradition of anonymity.

Cox often began his AA conversations by saying he thought he had done something "really bad," and then would talk about the slayings, several members testified.

One man, Mr. A., said Cox told him there was "a possibility that he had killed some people."

"I said, `Like in an accident?' He said, `No, as in a murder,' " Mr. A. said.

A woman who said she dated Cox, Miss S., began to cry as she described how Cox told her he thought he had killed the two doctors. "He said, `I don't remember that night. I'm afraid I might have done this,' " she said.

She testified that Cox said when he was in the third grade a psychologist told him he had urges to kill his parents, and that he thought he had killed the Chervus because they were sleeping in a bedroom once used by his parents.

Rubin had unsuccessfully tried to block the AA members' testimony, saying Cox's statements at meetings were privileged communications like those between lawyer and client or priest and confessor.