GUILTY NY - Cathleen Krauseneck, 29, axed to death, Brighton, 19 Feb 1982 *husband arrested in 2019*

I just watched the 48 Hours episode and didn't hear much concrete evidence to convict him at all! Even the jurors seemed to begin deliberations with reasonable doubt. It's such an odd case.
In 2020 Prof. Jane Moncton published her research on the 8 stages to domestic homicide and I didn't hear any evidence that he followed any of those typical patterns of behaviour either.


Curious about other viewers thoughts!
 
I just watched the 48 Hours episode and didn't hear much concrete evidence to convict him at all! Even the jurors seemed to begin deliberations with reasonable doubt. It's such an odd case.
In 2020 Prof. Jane Moncton published her research on the 8 stages to domestic homicide and I didn't hear any evidence that he followed any of those typical patterns of behaviour either.


Curious about other viewers thoughts!
I think for the jury it seemed just that nothing else made sense except that he did it. I agree though that there was no smoking gun.
 
I just watched the 48 Hours episode and didn't hear much concrete evidence to convict him at all! Even the jurors seemed to begin deliberations with reasonable doubt. It's such an odd case.
In 2020 Prof. Jane Moncton published her research on the 8 stages to domestic homicide and I didn't hear any evidence that he followed any of those typical patterns of behaviour either.


Curious about other viewers thoughts!
I disagree as per the interview with juror I. Matthew. The defendant had 3 more wives following Cathy but information about these relationships and dissolutions was suppressed from the trial.


For Matthew, the most compelling proof of James' guilt was evidence of a staged burglary.

"If you look at it even the items in the bag were standing up you had his foot print on the bag, there, the items on the floor were perfectly standing up nothing was knocked over, it was just so staged," he said. "There really was no evidence to show that anyone outside of him could have committed this murder that really did it for me."

Matthew said in the end, there was no hesitation about the verdict, but the jury had many conversations about the Krauseneck's daughter, Sara. She was three and a half years old when she was left at home, alone, all day with her mother's body.

"A lot of people had a hard time dealing with that but that was when we had to take the emotion out of it and just look at the facts and evidence that was presented- because you would say well a person who could do this to their wife, they could leave their child there in that type of situation," he said.

Krauseneck's demeanor in court also stuck out to Matthew.

"Just very stoic, he just had that demeanor, no face expression whatsoever," Matthew said.
 
In the winter of 1982, in the upscale Rochester, N.Y., suburb of Brighton, Jim Krauseneck told police he'd returned home from work to find a gruesome scene: His wife Cathy was dead in bed with an ax in her head.

Jim grabbed the couple's 3-year-old daughter, then ran to get help from a neighbor, who told police Jim, then 30, "had a look of terror on his face" and struggled to speak.

For decades, police searched for whoever killed the 29-year-old mom while she slept. Finally, police cracked the cold case, and how they did so is the subject of Monday’s episode of People Magazine Investigates. Titled “Brighton Ax Murder,” the episode premieres Monday, Aug. 14 at 9/8c on ID and streams on Max. (An exclusive clip is shown below.)

In the clip, prosecutors recount investigators' heart wrenching interview with the couple’s 3-year-old daughter, Sarah
 

9/17/23

A new crime documentary has laid bare the gruesome true story of a 29-year-old woman who was brutally murdered with an axe as her daughter slept in the room next door.

Cathleen Krauseneck's lifeless body was discovered in bed at her family home in Rochester, New York, in 1982.

She was found laying under blood-soaked sheets with the weapon still lodged in her head.
 

"48 hours" investigates the Brighton ax murder​

Feb 24, 2023 #48hours #crime
"48 Hours" investigates one of America's oldest cold cases, the Brighton ax murder. Forty years ago, a young mother was killed in her bed, her toddler left unharmed. It remained unsolved until now. "48 Hours" correspondent Erin Moriarty reports.
 
Moriarty returned to reporting on the Brighton murder of Cathy Krauseneck with a two-part podcast entitled "Did I Marry an Ax Murderer?" as part of her "My Life of Crime" series. The podcast, released late last month, includes the most extensive interviews yet with Sharon Krauseneck, whose husband was convicted last year of the February 1982 murder of his first wife, Cathy.

James Krauseneck Jr. was not charged with the murder until 2019, almost four decades after Cathy Krauseneck was found dead in the bed of the couple's Brighton home with an ax embedded into her skull.

While the title of Moriarty's podcast has a certain salaciousness, the podcast also focuses on what happened after Krauseneck's conviction and imprisonment. Shortly after being jailed, Krauseneck found he suffered from esophageal cancer. He died in prison in May at the age of 71.
 

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