The testimonies, like that of 94-year-old Margaret Arnold, will pull at the jury’s heartstrings.
But the jury shouldn’t be swayed by anything but the evidence against the illegal immigrant accused of killing a 63-year-old widowed woman and attacking three others, the immigrant’s attorney said Tuesday.
And that evidence, Alan Drew said in his opening argument, is lacking.
“We have to have sympathy and emotion for the women,” Drew said. “But you took an oath to do this based on evidence … and sometimes [prosecutors] get it wrong.”
Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy laid out his strategy Tuesday morning. He’ll go in chronological order, describing the details of the four violent robberies McCarthy claimed were committed by 34-year-old Jose Garcia-Perlera. “This case is about proving to [the jury], not that the crimes were committed, but that [Garcia-Perlera] committed them,” McCarthy said.
There is no question, the county’s top prosecutor said, that the four women were targeted for living alone in a wealthy neighborhood, hog-tied and robbed. The evidence, McCarthy said, would show Garcia-Perlera shut off the power to the women’s houses and then attacked them in their basements.
According to prosecutors, Garcia-Perlera left behind DNA evidence at three crime scenes, including the Bethesda home of 63-year-old Mary Havenstein, who was beaten to death in September. Havenstein was hogtied. Her body was discovered two days later by her niece.
But Drew called into question the DNA evidence, saying although it can indicate someone touched something, it cannot show when something was touched.
McCarthy said Garcia-Perlera had previous contact with some of the victims.
For example, he did electrical work at 79-year-old Ann Wolfe’s home in Potomac. The time he spent there before Wolfe was attacked in February 2008 helped Garcia-Perlera quickly locate a hidden safe and bash it open with a claw hammer, McCarthy said.
Still, there are the heartstrings.
Arnold was the first widow to fall prey to Garcia-Perlera, prosecutors said. On Tuesday, she recalled the night of Sept. 17, 2007, when she was attacked in her basement, tied up and gagged with her own socks.
“I started yelling. ‘What are you doing here? Get out of my house,’ ” Arnold said, according to the Associated Press. “I started to pray and asked God to protect me.” 13mdtrial
