“A (Wisconsin) man accused of murdering his wife told a jury today that he shoved a ceramic candy dish down her throat so she would shut up — but he didn’t mean to kill her. Patrick Zurkowski of Spencer also says his wife, June, attacked him with a paring knife.
The 40-year-old Zurkowski is charged with first-degree intentional homicide in the March 2006 death of his wife.
An autopsy determined June Zurkowski had been beaten and suffocated after pieces of an Easter bunny-shaped plate were lodged in her throat. Prosecutors say Zurkowski killed his wife of 3 and a half years after an argument over money.
Zurkowski testified for about two hours this afternoon and was the only defense witness called as the trial winds down.” [WCCN Radio]
Category Archives: Crime-Courts
Protect and Serve (and maybe kick your ass)
A chilling hidden-camera video of an encounter with a St. George, MO (near St. Louis) cop. I hope some of the local media pick this up and ask some questions. Here’s my imaginary scene at this morning’s roll call at St. George PD:
First Cop: “Hey, Kenline! I watched you go ape shit on that kid out the commuter parking lot this weekend.”
Sgt. Kenline: “What are you talking about?”
First Cop: “The kid had a camera rolling and your voice came through lound and clear. You got any vacation time coming, you need to take it, dude. But look at the bright side… you made the home page of Digg!”
Sgt. Kenline: “Uh, what’s dig?
Update 9/11/07: St. George Police Chief Scott Uhrig says his officers “are not trained and taught to act like that” …and Sgt. James Kuehnlein on unpaid suspension pending further investigation. [StLToday.com]
Update 9/12/07: Brett Darrow (the guy getting his ass chewed by the cop) met with St. George Police Chief Scott Uhrig for more than an hour Tuesday afternoon and also filed a formal complaint against the officer, Sgt. James Kuehnlein. During the meeting Darrow asked to see the videotape from Kuehnlein’s police car. But according to Uhrig, that footage, inexplicably, is nowhere to be found. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch] If the officer did nothing wrong, wouldn’t the patrol car video have cleared him? Hmmm?
Moral of the Story: Live each day like it’s gonna be on YouTube tomorrow.
Rhubarb at Dunklin County Courthouse
“Helluva rhubarb up at the courthouse last Friday. One of the prisoners tried to take his attorney hostage, stabbed her two or three times — not real serious — then took off running down the hall. One of the deputies and the investigator for the Prosecutor’s office tackled him and subdued him. In the process the investigator was stabbed in the face. Everybody says the prisoner was lucky that Raymond Scott was not (still) the sheriff, because Raymond would have killed him right on the spot.”
Google Web History
Remember James Keown? He’s the former Missouri radio guy charged with first-degree murder in the the death of his wife, Julie Keown. Authorities allege Keown poisoned his wife by spiking her Gatorade with antifreeze so he could collect on her $250,000 life insurance policy.
One of the witnesses in the recent evidentiary hearings was Andrew Winrow, a computer forensic investigator who testified that Internet searches recovered from at least one of James Keown’s computer hard drives revealed a search for The Anarchist Cookbook and ” homemade poisons” allegedly occurring on Aug. 17, 2004 and Aug. 18, 2004, less than a month before his wife’s death.
This story got me wondering what I’ve searched for and, as you might expect, Google makes has this info. Looks like I can go back about 90 days. I didn’t spot anything incriminating, but it’s an interesting snapshot of what I’ve been thinking about. I assume the NSA has this information as well.
Last laugh
Patrick Knight is scheduled to be executed later this month for the fatal shooting of his neighbors, Walter and Mary Werner, almost 16 years ago outside Amarillo. To come up with his final statement, Knight is accepting jokes mailed to him on Texas’ death row or emailed to a friend who has a Web site for him. The friend then mails him the jokes. Knight said the joke he finds the funniest will be his final statement the evening of June 26.
Knight said he got the idea for a joke as his last statement after a friend, Vincent Gutierrez, was executed earlier this year and laughed from the death chamber gurney: “Where’s a stunt double when you need one?”