92-YEAR-OLD'S SON TESTIFIES IN STRANGLING CASE : SLAYING SUSPECT DESCRIBED AS `SUPER-GENTLE' WITH AILING SPOUSE.

Byline: Christopher Noxon Daily News Staff Writer

The children of the oldest defendant ever to face murder charges in Ventura County rallied Tuesday behind their 92-year-old father, who confessed to sheriff's deputies that he strangled their mother.

As his siblings looked on, the oldest of Alfred and Lidwina Pohlmeir's two sons took the witness stand to describe the sick and unhappy years leading to the September 1995 death of his mother. Joseph Pohlmeir, a telecommunications manager from Simi Valley, testified that his father doted faithfully on his mother during a string of real and imagined illnesses.

``He was super-gentle,'' Joseph Pohlmeir said. ``He was very patient with her.''

Defense attorneys say Alfred Pohlmeir's patience ran out on the morning of Sept. 15, 1995. The former postal clerk grabbed his wife of 62 years and held her tightly around the neck until her arms went limp. She was rushed from the couple's Fillmore mobile home to Santa Paula Hospital, where she died two hours later.

Joseph Pohlmeir testified that his father appeared overcome with remorse the morning of Lidwina's death.

``He looked gray,'' he said. ``His eyes appeared to be set in deep. His hair didn't look combed.

``I asked him if he knew what kind of trouble he was in and I remember him saying, `They should just take me out and shoot me.' I remember him saying, `They should bury me with her,' '' said Joseph Pohlmeir, who appeared to be in his 50s.

Pohlmeir is charged with first-degree murder. His public defenders have entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.

If the jury finds Pohlmeir guilty of the crime, a second phase will be held for the jury to determine whether he was sane at the time.

If convicted, Pohlmeir faces a sentence of 25 years to life. If Pohlmeir is found not guilty by reason of insanity, he would be confined to a psychiatric hospital.

At 92, Pohlmeir is the oldest inmate ever held in Ventura County.

He sat hunched and expressionless in a wheelchair, wearing a baggy blue suit and a headset hearing aid. When Deputy Public Defender Susan Olson asked him during a break in testimony how he was feeling, he responded in a guttural voice, ``I'm wearing out.''

After turning to acknowledge his children seated in the second row of the courtroom, one of his three daughters called to him, ``I love you.''

Since Pohlmeir was arrested two years ago, he has been held in a private room in the medical wing of the county jail and covered by 24-hour nursing care. The county pays $8,000 a month for the nursing care and also covered the expense of brain surgery Pohlmeir underwent last year after falling and hitting his head in his cell, said sheriff's Capt. Keith Parks, administrative captain for the county jail.

Prosecutors argue that Pohlmeir deserves punishment regardless of his wife's, or his own, condition.

``She was not suffering from cancer or any other debilitating disease,'' Don Glynn said in opening statements last week. ``She did not want to die. . . . He took care of his wife for many years. He was a kind gentleman. But what he did was wrong.''

Glynn played a tape Tuesday of an interview Pohlmeir gave the day after the killing, in which he describes his wife resisting his attack. Deputy Joseph Preciado, who taped the interview in a hospital conference room, testified that Pohlmeir said he had strangled the ``damn woman'' after she would not stop coughing.

But Olson is pleading for mercy for Pohlmeir, arguing that the fragile Texan can barely walk, much less pose a public danger.