Convicted child killer Rebecca Grossman still refuses to take the blame for the deaths of two young brothers she struck with her speeding Mercedes, nearly six years after the tragic crash, a jury heard on Friday. Nor does her ex-lover, former professional baseball star Scott Erickson, with whom she was allegedly racing when the incident occurred at a pedestrian crossing in Westlake Village, west of Los Angeles, in September 2020, according to attorney Brian Panish, lead counsel for Nancy and Karim Iskander, parents of the deceased boys, Mark, 11, and Jacob, 8.
Opening Statements in Civil Trial
“To this day they dispute responsibility,” Panish asserted in his opening statement at the wrongful death civil trial of Grossman, 64, and Erickson, 58. “Miss Grossman will never admit it.” Instead, Panish claimed, Grossman is “blaming the boys’ parents” and arguing that the crosswalk where the boys were killed was at a “dangerous intersection.” “She is blaming the parents—really?” he said scornfully to the jury of eight women and four men. “It’s just a way to avoid responsibility. She won’t accept any responsibility—but she won’t be in court to do it.”
Grossman is currently serving 15 years to life in prison after a jury at her February 2024 criminal trial found her guilty of two counts each of second-degree murder and vehicular manslaughter, plus one count of hit-and-run. Her legal team during the murder trial pursued a defense strategy that blamed the fatal crash on Erickson, who was driving his black Mercedes just ahead of Grossman—and racing her, according to Panish—after the two had earlier shared cocktails.
Erickson’s Role and Legal Status
However, the 6-foot-4 former ballplayer—who did not appear at Grossman’s six-week criminal trial and was again absent on Friday—was only charged with a misdemeanor reckless driving offense, which was dismissed after he made a public service announcement to high school students about safe driving. Despite the lack of criminal charges against the former MLB pitcher, the Iskanders named Erickson in their civil lawsuit alongside Grossman, holding him equally responsible for the fatal crash. The grieving parents, who were in court on Friday, are seeking “tens and tens and tens of millions” in damages for the loss of their beloved boys, Panish said.
Erickson—who played for six MLB teams during a 16-year baseball career and won the World Series with the Minnesota Twins in 1991—vehemently denies any blame in the tragic deaths of the Iskander boys, insisting that Grossman was the sole cause of the horrific collision. He was having a love affair with the then-wealthy socialite while she was separated from her plastic surgeon husband, Dr. Pete Grossman, who is also a defendant in the lawsuit as the owner of the Mercedes she was driving at the time of the crash.
Details of the Tragic Incident
During Friday’s opening statements, after four days of jury selection, Nancy Iskander buried her head in her hands as Panish showed touching pictures of the victims in happier times, including a moving video she had taken of one of the boys at his birthday party. “They were best friends, they were inseparable… they played together… and they died together,” the lawyer said. The family, cooped up during COVID and eager for fresh air, took an evening walk together, with Nancy ahead with Mark, Jacob, and their five-year-old son Zachary, while Karim lagged behind with baby Violet in a stroller.
As she walked over the crosswalk with the boys, “Mrs. Iskander heard a revving of engines,” as two Mercedes bore down on them, Panish told jurors. “She grabbed her son Zachary and dove out of the way.” The next thing she saw was the broken bodies of her boys. Mark was thrown 252 feet by the impact of Grossman’s car. Jacob landed 73 feet away from where the cars struck him, the court heard. Coming across the horrifying scene, Karim tried to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to one of his dying sons, but it was too late, Panish said. “He sits down and starts to weep. His beautiful family is wiped away by the poor choices people made.”
Evidence of Racing and Impairment
Panish told the court that multiple witnesses will testify that Grossman and Erickson were racing just before the crash. Grossman’s car was clocked at over 80 mph in a 45 mph zone, as recorded by the vehicle’s on-board computer, he said. This is undisputed. That’s 120 feet per second. Had she been traveling at the legal speed limit, she would have been almost 600 feet from the boys as they crossed the crosswalk. “Mr. Erickson may say that he was only going at 50 mph, but we are going to prove that is not true.”
One key witness the Iskanders’ legal team plans to call is former baseball player Royce Clayton, a longtime friend of Erickson. In video testimony played for the jury, Clayton said that in a phone call just after the crash, Erickson admitted that he was racing Grossman, who was behind him, that he “swerved to avoid the kids” and that Mrs. Grossman “hit the children.” “Mr. Erickson will say that’s not true,” added Panish. “But why would a friend of 30 years make that up?”
He accused both Grossman and Erickson of “fleeing the scene of the crash afterward… or at least trying to.” Grossman’s car continued for 1,700 feet after hitting the boys, he said, with the vehicle only stopping because of an inbuilt safety measure that cut the engine to prevent fire. “If it was up to her, she would have gone home and said nothing,” Panish told the jury. “Mr. Erickson left the scene, parked his car, and hid in the bushes for three hours watching the scene of the crash.”
Panish played a video deposition by Grossman’s daughter Alexis, who was 17 at the time of the crash, telling an interviewer that she saw Erickson the night of the accident and he was “angry and frantic” and had the smell of alcohol on his breath. The Iskanders’ lawyers claim that both Grossman and Erickson were “impaired” at the time of the crash, having both been drinking alcohol earlier in the day. Grossman had been drinking with friends, and Erickson was at a bar drinking beer when the two met up for margaritas with Royce Clayton at a Westlake restaurant. She “flunked” a roadside sobriety test, said Panish, and had a blood alcohol level recorded as .08—the legal limit—three hours after the crash. She also had barbiturates in her system, “which can enhance impairment with alcohol.”
Defense Arguments
Without explicitly stating that Grossman is behind bars for killing the boys, Panish emphasized that she wasn’t in the courtroom on Friday. “She might say that she didn’t know she hit the boys—but she’s not going to be here to tell you,” he said. In her opening statement, Grossman’s attorney, Esther Holm, told jurors that there were other factors involved in the crash and there was “a rush to judgment” in determining that Rebecca was the sole cause of the accident. “We believe that Miss Grossman was not driving impaired. And there is no evidence that she was racing. Evidence will show that Miss Grossman never saw the children. She did not try to flee the scene. Her airbag deployed, causing a big cloud of dust in the vehicle so she could not see the children.”
Holm said that she believed Grossman was traveling “slower at the time of impact than Mr. Erickson” and that when police asked after the crash to inspect his black Mercedes, he produced “the wrong one” (Erickson owned two black Mercedes SUVs). She added that although he saw the boys in the crosswalk before he drove through, “he did not do anything to warn” Grossman, like flash his lights. After the crash, he went to Grossman’s nearby house and returned to the crash scene on foot and “stood 10 yards away for three hours but never identifying himself to officers.” Holm told the court that at the time of the crash, Grossman was separated from her husband and dating Erickson. “This was not some sordid affair going on behind Dr. Grossman’s back.” The attorney cited the fact that there were no stop signs, street lights, or flashing lights at the crosswalk as a factor in the accident and said that several local people had complained about safety problems at the intersection. “But the City of Westlake Village knew about the problems but did nothing about them.”
Erickson’s Defense
Addressing jurors in her opening statement, Erickson’s attorney, Deborah Tropp, said that her client “is going to testify that he was not racing Rebecca Grossman or anybody else.” She questioned the accuracy of eyewitnesses who accused the two of speeding and racing, saying that their testimony “contradicted” each other. “Mr. Erickson believes that he was going 50-55 mph,” she said, adding that when he saw the boys in the crosswalk, “he believed he would have hit them if he braked—so he decided to speed up and go around them. He looked back and they were still in the crosswalk unharmed and he did not see any headlights behind him… it was dark. He went back to Grossman’s house nearby where he got a phone call from her in which she said, ‘Something bad happened.’ He said, ‘Did you see those kids?’ She said, ‘What kids?’ And the line went dead.”
Tropp said that Erickson ran back to the crash scene where police would not allow him to get close. “He was not hiding in the bushes.” Why did he stay for three hours? “He will tell you that he was concerned for Miss Grossman,” continued Tropp. When he left the crash scene to go back to Grossman’s house, he found her daughter Alexis there, but the lawyer added that the teen’s claim that Erickson “was drunk and screamed at her” was not true. “She has changed her story at least two times,” said Tropp. “There was no negative interaction between Mr. Erickson and her that evening.”
