Cruel Death (39 page)

The next item, Case said, was an arm.

Then another arm.

The graphic images kept coming.

And coming.

One after the other.

Various shots of body parts in different positions, from the dump site to the medical examiner’s office, back to the dump site.

Flashes of horror. Like a slide show depicting some sort of ghastly scientific experiment gone wrong.

In what seemed more like a conversation between a state’s attorney and one of his detectives—as opposed to a witness being questioned during a trial—Detective Brett Case described what had been one of the more macabre discoveries from a day filled with just about every grisly image one could imagine. In a plastic garbage bag, which had an Ocean City bus pass inside, alongside an arm, Case found what at first “appeared to us to be a rubber glove.” It was located on the palm of a hand of an arm. But it wasn’t a glove, after all, Case explained. “Ultimately we determined it to be the actual skin of the hand, which had fallen off and was resting in the palm.” And from that sheath of skin, Case said, they were able to obtain fingerprints.

With that, and a few more insignificant questions and answers, Brett Case was finished.

Over the next few witnesses, the state went through the items Erika and BJ had purchased at Home Depot and Ace Hardware. It was important testimony, subtly telling jurors that Erika and BJ had no good reason, while on vacation, to replace a door and paint a bathroom, if they hadn’t dismembered two people inside the bathroom, shooting one of them through the door, and making a terrible mess of things.

Then a pizza restaurant waitress testified how she remembered meeting Erika and BJ on Memorial Day, Monday, May 27, 2002. “They were the only people at the bar,” she said.

Todd put up two photographs of BJ and Erika—together—inside a restaurant. The waitress said she took both photos.

Standing and staring at the photographs, which were still displayed, Tom Ceraso saw an opening. “Ma’am,” he asked, “. . . this was Memorial Day, the twenty-seventh of May, 2002, correct?”

“Correct,” she answered.

“I want you to look at Erika.”

“OK.”

“In that photograph, tell me if she has something around her neck.”

“She has a necklace.”

“And what’s at the end of the necklace?”

“A cross.”

“Is there anything else?”

“No.”

“Thank you,” Ceraso said smartly. “That’s all I have.”

98

Daddy’s Turn

Late into that same day, Scott Collins called Mitch Grace. Mitch looked tired and turned over by this process of testifying at his daughter’s murder trial. At this point in their lives, Mitch and Cookie should have been bouncing grandchildren off their knees, showering little pink gurgling babies with love and charm, spending their latter days enjoying the fruits of a wonderful life lived.

Obviously, it hadn’t turned out that way. Here was Mitch, nervous and scared for his only child, sitting in front of her in a court of law, as she fought for her freedom. Erika faced charges so horrific, Mitch had a hard time facing up to how his daughter’s life had turned out so dreadfully wrong.

There was some trouble hearing Mitch, and he was asked several times to speak up. When he did, Mitch talked about Memory Laine and what type of store it was, and how Erika loved nothing more than making scrapbooks and playing basketball. “Things like that.”

Mitch admitted that he had indeed arranged for BJ and Erika to stay at the Rainbow through a friend of his who owned the condominium complex.

“Did there come a time when a present was purchased for your daughter by Benjamin, which upset you a little bit?” Collins asked.

This riled Mitch. He seemed unnerved by the question. “I don’t know if he purchased it or not. He upset me when he told me that he was planning on buying
my
daughter a gun, and that
really
upset me, yes.”

“And was that gun a .357 Smith and—”

Mitch didn’t let him finish. “I don’t even . . .”

“—Wesson,” Collins tried to get in.

“I have no idea, sir!” Mitch raged. He was clearly taken aback by the question. “I told you he told me that he was planning on buying it. We had a big—we were—I was very upset with him for doing it. I didn’t think he should do it and I told him that.”

Collins asked, “Now, sir, do you recall giving an interview to the
Baltimore Sun
?”

“Uh, yes . . . ,” Mitch said, and then Ceraso asked the judge for a sidebar conference.

Arcky Tuminelli approached the bench with Ceraso and Collins and told the judge he expected Mitch to be impeached by a statement he had made to the
Sun.
Collins was going to use the article—or a particular quote from Mitch in that article—to show the jury how Mitch had developed selective memory since the case had moved forward.

The judge thought about it for a moment, and allowed it.

“Sir, do you recall the interview for this article?” Collins asked.

“Ah, I recall it. It was sometime last summer, so—”

“Sometime. Would it be fair to say your recollection is not perfect?”

“Well, I mean, I’d say it’s pretty good. I mean, that’s, I didn’t—”

Someone shouted,
“Really?”

Mitch countered sarcastically,
“Really!”

Arcky Tuminelli spoke up, “No recollection?”

“Would you feel it would be helpful if you reviewed a portion of this [article] to refresh your recollection?” Collins offered.

“On what?” The conversation seemed to be getting confusing.

“Yes, sir.”

“But see, I remembered the exact conversation with Benjamin Sifrit,” Mitch said, then explained how he wanted to relate
that
specific conversation, not what he had told the reporter from the
Sun,
which was exactly what Collins was trying to make clear. It got to the point where no one knew what the other was talking about because so many people were talking over one another. Collins wasn’t talking about a conversation Mitch and BJ had; he was referring to the conversation Mitch talked about in the newspaper article.

Mitch picked up on Tuminelli’s original objection, understood where Collins was going, and replied, “Well, but if I remember my conversation with Benjamin Sifrit and that’s . . . and I related that to the newspaper, I don’t know if they printed what I told ’em or not.”

Collins rolled his eyes. Paused. “Well—” he started to say, but Mitch interrupted.

“I know. I know.”

Then there was a heated, quick exchange between the two, beginning with Collins asking, “Can I show you what—”

“Benjamin Sifrit,” Mitch blurted out.

“. . . they . . .” Collins said, trying to finish.

“Told me,” Mitch said over him, confusing matters more.

“. . . printed . . .” Collins finally finished.

Ceraso objected.

After the judge sustained the objection, Collins asked what he probably should have asked to begin with: “Sir, did you ever see the weapon?”

Bottom line.

“No, I did not,” Mitch answered.

“You did not?”

An uncomfortable silence.

After two more questions, Collins searched his notes for a moment. “No further questions.”

The state brought in yet another ballistics expert after Mitch finished answering a few of Ceraso’s questions on cross, and the day’s proceedings concluded.

99

The Ring

Breaking news on the morning of June 6 wasn’t that the case of
Erika Sifrit
v.
The State of Maryland
was likely headed into its final few days of testimony, but rather an uncommon seismographic event had occurred throughout the southern Midwest. “I was in my house,” one man told CNN. “It felt like it was going to come off the foundation. It went three times and I thought that was it.” Some other people said their vehicles were shimmying, and another woman with a four-poster bed said the posts were vibrating.

The earthquake measured a magnitude of 4.5 and had been the first of its size to strike the region in nearly one hundred years. No one was hurt badly, but people were reminded of how fragile life was, and how things that might appear to be moving along at a normal, methodical pace could often change in an instant. This became an apropos metaphor for what was about to take place in what had been Erika Sifrit’s pampered life of running, drugging, drinking, and committing crimes with her former husband.

Since it was a Friday, most people in the courtroom were anticipating the weekend. It was spring. A beautiful day dawned outside the courtroom. Inside, however, Arcky Tuminelli got to work rather quickly on his defense, calling a series of witnesses to refute the state’s contention that Erika was the main reason why Joshua and Geney had ended up dead and dismembered. Luckily for Erika, that statement she gave to Agent Carri Campbell, of the Secret Service, had not come into the trial. The judge had ruled it inadmissible, of course, based on the deal Erika had signed with the state. Still, Tuminelli and Ceraso were walking on eggshells—even if they didn’t want to admit it—where that statement was concerned. Part of their defense strategy had to be built around the fact that if that statement became part of the trial, Erika Sifrit was finished. The bottom line was, if Erika took the stand, there was a good chance that statement would enter into the trial. And if that happened, Tuminelli knew, Erika would have to throw up her hands and take whatever the state offered.

In recalling OCPD detective Brett Case, Arcky Tuminelli had hoped to trip up the detective. In supporting a position Tuminelli and Ceraso were trying to advance, they wanted to remind jurors that although Case had testified that he believed the ring Erika was wearing around her neck in those photos, taken after the murders, was Joshua’s, there was no way the detective could actually prove it.

“There was a question about the quality of the photographs,” Arcky Tuminelli said later. “By recalling Brett Case, we wanted to point that out.”

Still, Joshua’s blood had been found on the ring. It was his ring, that much was not in dispute. And Erika had it in her possession when she was arrested. But as far as wearing it after the murders, no one could say that definitively.

“Look, it was one thing for my client to have that item,” Tuminelli recalled, “but quite another to be running around that week wearing it around her neck.” Arcky Tuminelli wanted to prove that although the photos might have depicted his client wearing the ring, there was no positive proof that it was the ring in question.

Tuminelli then asked Case about his experience, hoping to imply that he was somehow unqualified to make the assumptions he and Scott Bernal had made about Erika. Both detectives had made no bones about Erika’s guilt. It was clear in their mannerisms, inflections, and tone: Erika was the mastermind, BJ the muscle.

None of it worked, however. Case was sharp and on his toes when answering any question Tuminelli put to him.

For the most part, the defense focused on Case’s and Bernal’s interviews with Charles Atwood, BJ’s former SEAL buddy who had described the way in which BJ had talked about dismembering a human being, and what he would do with those dismembered body parts. Tuminelli knew this was damaging testimony. It pointed to guilt—but guilt on BJ’s part.

Not Erika’s.

Atwood had testified before Case, telling jurors the same story he had told the jury in BJ’s trial: he and BJ had had beers one day at a strip club, and BJ talked about dissecting a human being into six separate pieces (same as Geney and Joshua). Tuminelli’s strategy was to make the jury well aware of the fact that it was BJ’s plan all along to kill and dismember these people, and Erika was just going along with her controlling husband, feeling pressured and even scared into participating. Atwood was the conduit into that innocent bystander defense.

“Now, Detective Case, as a detective, if you believe that a witness made a statement that you believed was simply a joke, that statement, would you travel—how many hours did it take you to get to Virginia (where Atwood was at the time)?”

Tuminelli was implying in the question that Case and Bernal took what was a casual beer-buddy conversation between two military colleagues drinking at a strip club and blew it way out of proportion.

But Case said he and Bernal went to interview Atwood for a “number of reasons.”

Tuminelli marched on, focusing on the joke aspect of the conversation, wondering if Case and Bernal would have traveled all that way if the information was said to be nothing more than a joke.

Case kept saying he didn’t understand the question.

Repeat.

They went back and forth for a time, and then Tuminelli, frustrated and unable to get anywhere, relieved Case from his duties.

Tuminelli and Ceraso called a gun store owner next. The man testified that BJ had purchased the gun that ultimately killed Joshua—which was no surprise to anyone, as Collins and Todd had made it clear that BJ had bought the gun for Erika as a gift.

By the end of the day, Karen Wilson had taken the stand and, once again, told her story, recounting what had been a harrowing night with two seemingly mental cases she would much rather forget about. In the end, Wilson’s testimony meant little to the scope of Erika’s case. The jury was either going to believe that Erika played a part in the murders, or that she was coerced by a controlling husband.

Wilson’s testimony could fit into either argument.

The jury was not going to hear from Erika. The major concern for Erika’s camp was that if she sat on the witness stand and supported the main theory Tuminelli and Ceraso had been laying out for the jury—that Erika had assisted BJ
after
the murders—there was the great potential the statement Erika had made to Carri Campbell was going to be introduced. In order for that statement
not
to become part of the case, Erika would have to, essentially, lie on the witness stand. And once she perjured herself, and the state knew it and could prove it, the statement was up for grabs.