Murder Trial To Begin Tomorrow For Oregon Anti-Gang Activist

EUGENE - A woman who helped to organize the city's gang-prevention task force goes on trial this week nearly a year and a half after she was accused of masterminding the death of a teenage gang member.

Mary Louise Thompson, 41, faces a possible life sentence if she is convicted of aggravated murder in the October 1994 death of 18-year-old Aaron Iturra. The trial is expected to begin tomorrow.

Thompson earned the nickname "gang mom" for her crusade against gangs after her son turned to them at the age of 13 and ended up in state prison.

Iturra and two teens accused of shooting him while he slept were among dozens of troubled young people Thompson befriended.

But police say Thompson began to act like a gang member herself, talking their "talk" and allowing them to use her house as a headquarters before plotting the community's first gang-related murder.

Thompson's lawyer, Steve Chez, says she is not guilty.

Chez says she merely took a street-style approach to the teenagers who spent time at her home. "When you deal with people who are kind of on the fringe, you don't go forward like Mrs. Cleaver, Beaver's mom, and say, `That would be wrong. You mustn't do it. You must give up this life of crime,' " Chez said.

"She tried to be as close as she could to these kids without alienating them, and if you're too much of a square, you'd alienate them a lot."

The two teenagers charged with the shooting, James Roger Elstad and Joseph Richard Brown, pleaded guilty to murder. Elstad is serving a 16-year prison sentence and Brown is serving 10. Much of the evidence against Thompson, who has been in the Lane County Jail since February 1995, comes from taped telephone calls.

Between Jan. 15, 1995, and her arrest, police eavesdropped on phone conversations involving other young people in her house - members of what police say was a gang calling itself the 74 Hoover Crips.

More than 1,800 phone calls were made to and from Thompson's home over the course of the month. Her attorney, Chez, said the tapes are irrelevant and open to interpretation.