LA Times URL:
http://www.latimes.com/communities/news/pomona_valley/20010503/tiv0013767.html

WITNESS PAINTS PICTURE OF NIGHT OF HEAVY DRUG USE

Dell Bender Testifies That Sidney Polidori Gave Morphine To Israel Polidori
The Night Before He Died.

RANCHO CUCAMONGA -- A 49-year-old chiropractor gave his intoxicated
stepson morphine and a muscle relaxant to intensify his buzz the night
before the young man died, the stepson's best friend testified Wednesday.

Dell Bender, 24, told the court that Sidney J. Polidori later told him
to lie about the pills.

Israel Polidori died May 6, 2000, two weeks shy of his 25th birthday.
Prosecutors charged Sidney Polidori with second-degree murder and
transporting or furnishing a controlled substance on March 22. He
pleaded not guilty in April.

He was in West Valley Superior Court on Wednesday for the first day of
a preliminary hearing.

Bender told the court that Israel Polidori called him the evening of
May 5 and suggested that the pair drink some beers to celebrate Cinco
de Mayo. Bender went to the Polidori home on Sleepy Oak Road in Chino
Hills.

He, Israel and Sidney Polidori drank liquor together, Bender said. At
one point, he and Israel went out to a liquor store to buy three 32
oz. bottles of Miller High Life.

Sidney Polidori gave each of the young men a dark blue, oval-shaped
pill, told them it was morphine, and told them to swallow it "to
increase our little buzz," Bender testified.

He later gave each a white pill, which he did not identify, and a pill
he said was a muscle relaxant, Bender said. He also broke two more
morphine pills in half and gave the halves to his stepson and Bender,
Bender said. Sidney Polidori never swallowed any of the pills, Bender
said.

At one point, Bender said, Sidney Polidori spread a white powdery
substance on the backs of the young men's hands and told them to
"slurp it up."

The elder Polidori asked the young men how they were feeling at
various points during the evening and told them that certain pills
would counteract the buzz they were already feeling, Bender said.

Israel drove Bender home at 2:30 a.m. Bender said he had never felt so
intoxicated.

"I thought I was gonna die," Bender said, adding that he immediately
ate half a refrigerated pizza when he got home so he would have
something to throw up.

Sidney Polidori's wife, Debra, said her husband went in and out of
Israel's room seven or eight times the next day but did not tell her
anything was wrong.

She asked him what he was hiding from her, and he said
nothing.

When she finally went into her son's bedroom, she said the young man
was unconscious and making a gurgling sound. His mouth was silver.

"I said, 'Look at the way he's holding his mouth,' " Debra Polidori
said. "He said, 'I've been cleaning mucus out of it.' " Debra Polidori
left the house after her husband assured her that her son would be
OK.

Paramedics came to the house about 6:30 p.m. in response to a 911 call
and found Israel not breathing and without a pulse, San Bernardino
County sheriff's deputies said. He died that night.

When Debra Polidori got home that night, she found her husband
cleaning out his dresser where he kept his pills, she said.

"He told me Israel didn't make it," she said.

Later, she said, she saw Sidney Polidori taking prescription pills
down from a shelf in the garage.

"I said, 'You stupid man.' He said, 'I know.' "

Sidney Polidori told his wife that it "wouldn't go well" for her if
she discussed Israel's death with police, she said. He also threatened
to commit suicide, she said.

Defense attorney Barry Bernstein suggested that the young men could
have gotten to the pills on their own because they were left out and
were accessible.

The hearing will continue today.