A man accused of killing an Elkton woman ? and alsocharged with assaulting six other women and suspected of killing three more ? briefly took the stand Monday in his murder trial, the first time he has publicly spoken since the trial started last week.
Dressed in a gray suit, Charles Eugene Burns, 35, spoke quietly but with a noticeable country twang.
Asked if he had ever been diagnosed with a mental illness, Burns said he?d suffered and been treated in the past for “just a little depression, nothing major that I know of.”
He also said he?d dropped out of school in the eighth or ninth grade.
“It?s been so long, I can?t recall,” he said. But he could still read and write well enough to understand the charging documents against him, he said.
Burns stands accused of killing Lillian Abramowicz Phelps, 43, who disappeared May 31 in Aberdeen and was found dead June 14 beside a secluded farm road outside Havre de Grace. Prosecutors say her injuries, combined with blood and hair found beneath Burns? Dodge Neon, indicate that Burns ran her over with the car.
Prosecutors rested their case Monday after several days of testimony, including that of the medical examiner who performed Phelps? autopsy and lab experts who connected blood beneath the car to Phelps.
Burns was called to the stand ? out of the presence of the jury ? so the judge could explain his right to testify on his own behalf and make sure the defendant was competent to exercise or waive that right.
Burns chose not to testify, and the defense rested without presenting any witnesses.
Public Defender Kelly Casper moved that the charges be dismissed. She said prosecutors could not conclusively put Burns and Phelps together before she died, and the medical examiner’s testimony failed to consider any other theories about the cause of death other than the car, which had been proposed to her by the prosecutors. While Casper offered no explanation for the blood beneath the car, she contended that the hair found on a bolt under the car ? which prosecutors believe was the “murder weapon” ? was not conclusively Phelps?, or even human.
Both sides are expected to make closing arguments this morning before the jury adjourns to deliberate.
They will also receive instructions from the judge, including a warning that a defendant?s choice not to testify should not be held against him.
