Great updates upthread - as suspected - D trying to embed arguement in Jury Instructions. Have they offered one yet about Thunderstorms or Greek Salad?
Meanwhile, I’m working on closing arguments. Here is what I have so far.
Ladies & Gentlemen,
A mother of 5 was viciously abducted, assaulted and senselessly murdered in her NC home, after she dropped her children at school, unaware it would be the last time she would ever see them. Those children, at the tender ages of 8-13, will soon learn the cruel fact that they are forever without their beloved mother.
Ironically, a yellow school bus is bringing other ebullient children to school in NC that same morning. Those children would go home to their mothers. A camera on the exterior of this yellow school bus inadvertently grabs footage of a conspicuous red Tacoma. The owner of the red Tacoma, PG, is unaware that his red truck is not in Farmington at 80 MS where he last saw it; but is rather 90 minutes away in NC.
Around the same time that morning, another mother is bringing her child to school in Farmington. But this mother does so knowing it’s part of a murder alibi of the unsuspecting mother in NC, Jennifer Ferber Delos. (Here I would point directly at MT and escalate voice and shine a big, uncomfortable spotlight on HER. She has been blending in with the walls the whole time. SHE is on trial. The State needs to make it personal to her. Not FD.)
Jennifer Ferber Delos is the wife of Defendant’s live-in-boyfriend, Fotis Delos, father of their 5 children.
During 2019, Defendant finds herself to be an inconvenient presence in the divorce and custody dispute between Jennifer and FD. Defendant is living in the victim’s house as FD’s mistress. The Delos divorce is far from being resolved. FD’s custody rights swing from none at all, to supervised visits at best (on the condition that Defendant not be present). This requires Defendant (and her daughter) to vacate 4JC as a condition of FD’s supervised visitation.
This second tier status is not acceptable to the Defendant, and the situation is boiling over. Vacating 4JC for the benefit of Jennifer’s children is beneath her opinion of herself. “I didn’t move here for this.”
Defendant has shown herself to be jealous and controlling with respect to romantic relationships. You heard testimony that Defendant monitored FD’s whereabouts, aggressively challenged his failure to promptly respond to her texts with profanity and crass nudity, and that she knew FD was interested in other women and covered it up with male code names in his phone.
The Defendant grows increasingly hostile towards Jennifer’s omnipresence in her life. The divorce matters are wasting her pond time (“at least 3 weeks..”), and FD is always in a bad mood which isn’t any fun for her.
Shortly before Jennifer’s murder, Jennifer wanted to spare HER young children the heartbreak of the family dog’s impending death. Showing only callous regard for the young children, the inability to feel empathy even for the most innocent, she labels Jennifer a b*tch for doing so, in front of PG, and then stunningly expresses her wish for Jennifer to be buried with the family dog. Why so much anger towards the mother of someone else’s kids at such a time? Why does Jennifer’s rightful choice with respect to matters involving her children’s mental health vex this Defendant so much? Why does her anger trigger a hypothetical burial of Jennifer?
Fotis has his own motive for wanting Jennifer out of his life; Fotis killed his wife on 5/24. But his murder plot required a co-conspirator to pull off the conundrum of him appearing to be in Farmington preparing for an open house when he was in fact in NC on the morning of 5/24 committing the murder of Jennifer….there was only one person who could have been manipulating FD’s phone starting at 6:44 am of the 24th. And this person was full of knowledge, intent and disregard for Jennifer Delos’s life.
While Defendant may have admitted to lying to LE in places, her “corrected” version of events has been shown to be inconsistent with the facts. You know it’s impossible that the Defendant and FD had lunch that day. You know fires in May are illogical when people are wearing shorts. You know a dura flame log doesn’t burn in small increments. You know disposing of trash all over town is not a coincidence on the day Jennifer goes missing.
But she tripled down on her lies about the phone, specifically between 6:44 am when she awakens, and through 8:26 am when the call from Greece comes in. She knows FD was not home, and she knows that the phone staying at 4JC is the crux of the ruse. She cannot explain how the phone came to be in the office, plugged in, and on the glass table. She can’t explain it because she knows it puts her at the murder scene.
(Will try to keep going - but much work today, and I’d rather watch tomorrow versus today)
