Rebecca Grossman, center, is flanked by her daughter Alexis Grossman, left, and husband Peter Grossman, right, as she walks near the Los Angeles courthouse where she was tried for murder (YouTube screengrab/KTLA). Inset: Police at the scene of the deadly crash where Rebecca Grossman fatally struck brothers Jacob Iskander, 8, and Mark Iskander, 11, with her car on Sept. 29, 2020 (YouTube screengrab/KNBC).
The Los Angeles driver convicted of murdering two young boys as she sped through a residential intersection has allegedly been breaking the law from behind bars.
Rebecca Grossman, 60, was convicted in February in the deaths of Jacob Iskander, 8, and Mark Iskander, 11, who she struck with her car as they crossed the street at a marked crosswalk in their Westlake Village neighborhood on Sept. 29, 2020. Westlake Village is a Los Angeles-area city in the San Fernando Valley, about 35 miles northwest of downtown LA.
According to a motion regarding “defense violation” of civil procedure and a “request to revoke defendant’s privileges” filed by prosecutors on Monday, Grossman and her defense team have been engaging in illegal activity since she was remanded to a downtown LA jail after her conviction.
A private investigator has contacted at least three jurors — and “showed up at their residences,” the motion alleges. That investigator, Paul Stuckey, “did not properly identify himself, rather stating that he was a ‘private investigator for the family,”” the motion said.
“Mr. Stuckey does not work for the people,” prosecutors clarified. Nor does he work for the Iskander family, which has sued Grossman for wrongful death. Grossman’s defense lawyers, however, appear to have acknowledged that the investigator was linked to the attorneys handling the case post-conviction.
“In order to contact these jurors, Mr. Stuckey would have had to obtain the jurors names and contact information,” the motion says, adding that such information was “ordered sealed by the court” after Grossman’s conviction. Although Grossman’s legal team could have petitioned the court for juror information, that didn’t happen.
The only possible ways for the defense to have gotten that information “was by either photographing the jury list that was presented to counsel during jury selection or by copying the juror’s names down off this same list,” the motion says. Under California law, this was “not only improper and should not have occurred, but is also illegal.”
“The defense is actively attempting to engage in jury tampering and this Court is now formerly on notice,” the motion adds. Prosecutors want an order that all juror information be returned to the court and deleted immediately from any devices on which they are stored. Prosecutors also want the defense lawyers to be admonished and ordered to pay sanctions.
‘We have to stop talking about the case on the recorded line’
As for Grossman, her allegedly illegal jailhouse action began almost immediately, prosecutors say, starting with using her phone privileges.
According to the motion:
While in custody the defendant immediately began using her phone privileges to engage in wholly improper conduct or potentially illegal conduct. These calls include admissions to violating the court protective order regarding the disclosure of evidence on the internet and to the press. 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 attempt to influence [the judge] in regards to sentencing and motions for new trial. In custody phone privileges are just that, a privilege, and the defendant is using this privilege to make phone calls in an attempt to commit crimes and unduly influence witnesses and this Court. Therefore, this Court should revoke this privilege.
Prosecutors add that since “these same conversations can still be had via visitation or mail, those privilege should be revoked as well.”
In nearly every conversation, the defendant’s husband tried to remind her that they were being recorded.
“I want you to put everything out,” she told her daughter on Feb. 23, speaking of videos that, according to the Los Angeles Times, included law enforcement body-worn camera footage. After her daughter Alexis and husband Peter Grossman reassured her they would, Peter Grossman tried to steer his wife from saying anything more.
“Are we going to appeal?” she asked.
“Yeah, 100%,” Peter Grossman said. “Absolutely. Honey, just remember everything on this call is being recorded.”
“I don’t care,” the defendant said. “It’s the truth.”
The next day, Rebecca Grossman told her daughter to “get in touch with that woman at Fox that I sent the card.”
Alexis Grossman said that she would do as her mother asked.
“Rebecca, you know, we wrote this,” her husband then said, according to the filing. “I don’t want you to say anything on the phone right now.”
“Why? It’s the truth,” she said.
Later in the conversation, Rebecca Grossman asked her husband to “[m]aybe, like, give somebody some money to see if you can visit me.”
“Umm. I. Yeah I will,” Peter Grossman replied. “But. Shhhh. Yes. I will do whatever I can.
Also that day, the defendant said that jurors “weren’t on [her] side from the beginning” and that they may have been manipulated by prosecutors.
“I swear I think that the prosecutor had somebody on the inside that was [unintelligible] the jury,” Rebecca Grossman said.
In a conversation the following day in which the defendant and her husband apparently agreed that the real culprit is former Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Scott Erickson — who was allegedly speeding through the neighborhood in his own car along with the defendant — Peter Grossman again reminds his wife to use discretion in their conversation.
“He needs to confess,” Rebecca Grossman said.
“I know he needs to confess, but right now, I can’t even talk about the case, but that guy needs to, you’re in jail for him, and it drives me crazy,” her husband replied, according to the filing.
After telling the defendant that she was the prosecutors’ “sacrificial lamb,” Peter Grossman reminded his wife that they probably shouldn’t be discussing this on a jailhouse phone.
“But again, we have to stop talking about the case on the recorded line,” he said, according to the motion.
‘They wished to have no contact with the defendant’
The motion also alleges that Grossman wrote a letter to the Iskander family and had it mailed to their “personal residence.”
“On multiple prior occasions they have indicated that they wished to have no contact with the defendant,” the motion says. “They did not wish to receive this letter from the defendant.”
Prosecutors have asked for a no-contact order barring Grossman from contacting her victims’ family, “either verbal, written or otherwise.”
At the time of the deadly collision, Grossman was allegedly engaging in a “high-speed game of chicken” with Erickson when she reached speeds of over 80 mph — more than twice the legal speed limit of 45 mph. She allegedly kept driving after striking the children, only coming to a stop a quarter-mile away because her engine cut off, authorities said. It was initially reported that she carried one of the boys on the hood of her car for more than 100 feet and then, after hitting the brakes, ran over him as she left the scene.
At a pretrial hearing, a sheriff’s deputy had testified that Mark was thrown 254 feet. Evidence at that hearing also revealed that Grossman had reached 81 mph about a second and a half before hitting the boys.
After two days of deliberations and a six-week trial, jurors convicted Grossman of two counts each of second-degree murder and vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence and one count of hit-and-run resulting in death in the killings of the young boys. She faces up to 34 years to life in state prison when she is sentenced on April 10.
Grossman is scheduled to be sentenced on April 10.
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