By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
PONTIAC, Mich. -- A "Jenny Jones Show" guest who said humiliation drove him to kill a gay man who had professed his love had had sex with the victim before the killing, a jury was told Wednesday.
Another guest on the show and the mother of the victim, Scott Amedure, said Amedure told them he had slept with the guest, Jonathan Schmitz, after the taping.
Amedure's family is suing the show and its distributor, Warner Bros., a unit of Time Warner, for $50 million, contending that Schmitz was mentally ill and was lured onto the show believing he would meet a woman, and became enraged when his "secret admirer" turned out to be Amedure. Three days after the taping, Schmitz, who has said he is heterosexual, killed Amedure with a shotgun.
Schmitz was found guilty of murder in 1996, but his conviction was thrown out on appeal. His retrial is set for Aug. 19.
Lawyers for the show said that Schmitz was told his secret admirer could be a man or woman and that the show was not to blame for Amedure's death.
In a videotaped deposition, Amedure's mother, Patricia Graves, said she had not taken her son seriously when he said that he and Schmitz had "had an affair."
Defense lawyers also played a tape of the deposition by Ronnie Perez, a guest on the same episode. Perez said Amedure told him in a phone conversation after the taping, "I slept with Jon."