Robert Picardo. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The estranged wife of Star Trek: Voyager actor Robert Picardo, awaiting trial on charges that include being an accessory after the fact in a homicide, has been sued by the victim’s widow and three daughters.
Linda Jean Pawlik, 62, of Sierra Madre, is awaiting trial with another defendant in connection with the 2014 killing of 43-year-old Edward Mello.
The plaintiffs in Friday’s Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit are Mello’s widow, Adriana Martinez, and their three daughters, Christina, Isabella and Victoria Mello.
The wrongful death suit seeks unspecified damages. A representative for Pawlik could not be immediately reached.
Mello died Oct. 29, 2014 of a single gunshot wound to his head in a Woodland Hills hotel room on Ventura Boulevard. Jorge Rodriguez was arrested the next month and charged with murder.
The suit states that Picardo and Pawlik were involved in a bitter divorce. Pawlik hired an accountant who was living with Mello to deal with the divorce assets, and both the accountant and Mello moved in with Pawlik, the suit states.
Both Pawlik and the accountant were methamphetamine abusers, the suit states.
The suit alleges the accountant introduced Pawlik to Rodriguez and that Pawlik gave Rodriguez the gun allegedly used to kill Mello after she suspected the victim of stealing her property.
Pawlik subsequently set up a hotel room meeting between Rodriguez and Mello, where Rodriguez “carried out the plan concocted with Pawlik and fatally shot and killed Mello,” the suit alleges.
“As part of their plan, Pawlik and Rodriguez conspired to call the police and report the murder as a possible suicide by Mello,” the suit states.
Pawlik and Rodriguez are awaiting criminal trials in Van Nuys Superior Court.
–City News Service
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