DEFENSE'S SLIMY CLAIM: THESE DOPE-SMOKE HIPPIES DESERVED IT

SINCE Day One of the Carnegie Deli Massacre trial, the defense has sounded a
subtle - and deeply offensive - theme:

They seem to suggest that the three people murdered above the deli last year
had, somehow, brought the killing upon themselves. After all, they smoked
pot.

This infuriates a close-knit group of girlfriends of Jennifer Stahl, one of
three executed in a robbery that netted thieves about $350 and a bag of pot.
And they're right.

No one asks to die this way. But just maybe the victims of the bloodbath
should have heeded signs that something terrible might happen.

Barbara Coleman, one of Jennifer's closest pals, saw it coming. For two
months before the murders, she grew afraid of visiting Jennifer's apartment.
She calls her anxiety a "premonition."

More likely, she just could no longer ignore what no one else in her circle
of friends cared to see.

"The people who came in [to the apartment], there seemed to be a shift in
the last year," Barbara told me yesterday, in tears.

"These were more hip-hop kind of people. Different from the professionals
she dealt with in the music or entertainment industry.

"I clearly told her, 'I don't feel safe.' And we talked about it. She said I
was probably being paranoid. Jennifer trusted people."

Coleman, a 44-year-old theatrical agent, is one of Jennifer's loyal
girlfriends who attend the trial regularly. They are women on either side of
40 who've worked in and around showbiz most of their adult lives.

Some have tasted success, or still believe it is coming. Musicians, dancers,
unconventional types. They gathered in Jennifer's place above the deli to
record music or just talk. And, yes, smoke the pot that Jennifer
supplemented her income by selling.

Hip-hop wannabe Sean Salley, one of two men charged with the murders,
referred callously to Jennifer, in his taped confession, as a "hippie."

Hippie. To Salley, that means "weak."

Yesterday, Rosemond Dane testified in crushing detail about watching her
boyfriend, Charles Helliwell, die on the floor of the apartment, a bullet
piercing his head. She would have died, too, had she not jerked her head at
the last second.

But under cross-examination, defense lawyer Andrew Katz sounded a strangely
accusatory tone, asking her why she came to New York, whether she smoked
pot, whether she'd had a drink.

Outside, Barbara was adamant. "It could have been me."

No one asks to die like this.