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Acremant says he'll kill lawyer Convicted killer of two Medford women threatens court-appointed attorney, who asks to quit case The man who was sentenced to death for the 1995 murders in Medford of Roxanne Ellis and Michelle Abdill allegedly threatened to kill his California court-appointed attorney, according to the Tulare County District Attorney's Office. Jim Kordell of Tulare County's alternate public defender office on Wednesday asked to be relieved of his duties representing Robert James Acremant on a separate murder charge. Kordell said Acremant threatened to kill the attorney and his family. Acremant confessed to the December 1995 killing of Ellis and Abdill, a Medford lesbian couple, saying he wanted money from their rental business to further his relationship with a Las Vegas stripper. He was the first person in Jackson County to be condemned to death since Oregonians voted to restore capital punishment in 1984. He also petitioned the Oregon Supreme Court to represent himself in his death sentence appeal. Acremant was scheduled to go to trial in California next month. But the trial was put off when Kordell told the Tulare County District Attorney's Office about the threats, said Carol Turner, Tulare County assistant district attorney. A temporary counsel, Clark Hiddleston of the alternate public defender's office, was appointed to Acremant's case. But Acremant objected to the new appointment because Hiddleston was a California deputy district attorney in 1990, Turner said. The case will now go to trial sometime within the next six months, said Sharon Henry, supervising district attorney in Tulare County. If convicted in California, Acremant faces the death penalty or life in prison without parole, said Henry. He is now imprisoned in Tulare County. Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.