State v. Girts
| Decision Date | 24 July 1997 |
| Docket Number | Nos. 69570,69572,s. 69570 |
| Citation | 121 Ohio App.3d 539,700 N.E.2d 395 |
| Parties | The STATE of Ohio,Appellee, v. GIRTS, Appellant. * |
| Court | Ohio Court of Appeals |
Stephanie Tubbs Jones, Cuyahoga County Prosecuting Attorney, and Timothy G. Dobeck, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, Cleveland, for appellee.
John P. Parker, Cleveland, for appellant.
The grand jury returned a one-count indictment charging defendant Robert Girts with the aggravated murder of his wife, decedent Diane Girts. A jury found defendant guilty, but this court reversed the conviction on grounds that the trial court should have granted a mistrial when the state questioned defendant about an alleged jailhouse confession without having a good faith basis upon which to conduct that line of inquiry. See State v. Girts (July 28, 1994), Cuyahoga App. No. 65750, unreported, 1994 WL 393678. On retrial, a jury again found defendant guilty of aggravated murder.
The state's evidence showed that defendant and decedent lived in a house that adjoined the funeral home where defendant worked as a funeral director and embalmer. On the morning of September 2, 1992, defendant and several others began driving back from Chicago to Parma after having assisted in moving defendant's brother. Decedent remained at home, being scheduled to work at noon that day. When she did not arrive at work on time, a co-worker telephoned the funeral home and expressed her concern over decedent's unusual tardiness. A funeral home employee noticed decedent's car in the driveway, so he checked the house. The employee found the screen door open and called into the house. When decedent failed to respond, he entered the house and discovered her body slumped over in the bathtub.
The police found no evidence of foul play nor any obvious sign of suicide. A razor floating on the bath water, a hot curling iron resting on a nearby dressing table, and the couples' dog roaming in the yard led the police to conclude that decedent had died suddenly while bathing. Because the police could not readily determine a cause of death, they transported the body to the coroner's office for an autopsy.
During the autopsy, the coroner's office noted no obvious cause of death. The coroner did find an undigested meal of pasta salad in decedent's stomach, and recognized lividity or reddening of the skin which would typically be found in a person exposed to carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide testing, however, showed no significant levels. The coroner listed no cause of death.
Around September 20, 1992, defendant telephoned the police and told them that he had found a note, hand-written by decedent, which might explain her death. The undated note stated, Defendant explained that he found the note underneath some papers in his brief case. He told police that decedent had been despondent over their recent move to the Cleveland area. She had difficulty finding work and worried that she had a weight problem. Defendant also told the police that decedent suffered three miscarriages and had been trying to come to grips with the thought that she might not be able to bear children.
At about the same time, the coroner ordered department toxicologists to perform additional tests on body fluids taken from decedent, specifically asking them to detect the presence of any poisons. An initial test for the presence of potassium cyanide had to be discarded when the toxicologist discovered that reagents used in the testing process had been compromised. New reagents were obtained and the toxicologist obtained a positive result for cyanide at about twice the minimum lethal dose. The coroner verified this result by asking the Franklin County Coroner's Office to test for the presence of cyanide by using a different methodology. The Franklin County Coroner obtained virtually identical results. The coroner then listed the cause of death as homicide.
The police returned to defendant's house and executed a search warrant, pointedly telling defendant that they were looking for cyanide or other poisons. Defendant cooperated with the search, but the police found nothing. The police questioned the funeral home operators about the possible use of cyanide in the embalming process, but found no evidence that the funeral home had received cyanide from any of its suppliers. A funeral home director later recalled a conversation with defendant in which they discussed how the police investigated funeral home supply shipments for deliveries containing cyanide and defendant said, "That is not where I got it from."
The evidence did not show that the police had any suspects until they broadcast a plea for assistance with a television crime watch service. As a result of that broadcast, defendant's commanding officer in the Army reserves came forward in January 1993 with information that she had sent defendant two grams of potassium cyanide. She explained that defendant knew that she worked as a chemist in her civilian job and that in the spring of 1992, he asked her if she could supply him with a small amount of cyanide for use in controlling groundhogs on his property. The commanding officer did not immediately send the cyanide. She later discovered that defendant had left his business card on her desk. A notation on the card, in defendant's handwriting stated, "Thank you for your help." In the lower corner of the card defendant wrote "KCN," the chemical abbreviation for potassium cyanide. The card reminded the commanding officer of defendant's request, so she sent "a couple of grams" of cyanide to the funeral home address listed on defendant's business card. The commanding officer explained that she came forward with the information after learning that defendant's wife had died as a result of cyanide poisoning.
When confronted with evidence that he had obtained cyanide, defendant told the police that he had used the cyanide to control groundhogs on the property. A funeral home employee, however, insisted that he had no knowledge of a groundhog problem, and produced records showing that squirrels were the only pest control problem on the property. The city pest control officer stated that he had no complaints about groundhogs. A representative from a pest control company conceded that cyanide might have been used for pest control well in the past, but that in ten years of business, she had not used any products containing cyanide.
Other persons came forward with information that soon corroborated police suspicion on defendant. A business associate recalled a conversation in which defendant abruptly interrupted her to ask if she could show him the measurement of a gram. When the business associate asked why he needed this information, defendant said that he needed to measure some medicine for his dog's food. Defendant's veterinarian, however, stated that he prescribed no medication for the dog that would require any kind of measuring.
A colleague at the funeral home described a conversation in which he said that defendant had told him that decedent committed suicide. When the colleague wondered how decedent could procure cyanide, defendant responded that "she probably got it down on West 25th Street where she worked because she came in contact with a lot of low lifes." In a subsequent conversation, the colleague again wondered how decedent could have obtained the cyanide, and this time defendant said, "Someone at the coroner's office probably spilled some of it because they keep it there."
Another funeral home colleague testified that when the ambulance came to transport decedent's body, defendant yelled to the drivers that they should take the body to Parma General Hospital. The police learned that defendant had previously worked for the Lorain County Coroner. His experience there would tell him that all deaths occurring without any known natural cause would ordinarily be investigated by the coroner's office, which ordinarily performed more complete autopsies than hospitals.
The police also began to question decedent's motivation to commit suicide. Several close friends told the police that they had spoken with decedent shortly before her death and found her in good spirits. The friends found nothing unusual about her behavior and noted that decedent was looking forward to moving into a house she and defendant recently purchased. One friend did, however, say that she had met with defendant shortly before decedent's death and he told her that decedent was depressed about living in Cleveland. This statement contradicted the friend's perceptions. Just three days before her conversation with defendant, the friend spent the weekend with decedent and defendant and found nothing unusual about decedent's demeanor.
The state settled on two factors motivating the murder. First, it discovered that defendant had had a fitful affair with another woman who would not continue the affair as long as defendant remained married. Defendant and the woman first became involved for a short period in 1980, but the woman broke off the affair because she had discovered defendant lying about his marital status with a previous wife. The affair resumed briefly in either 1985 or 1986, but ended shortly by mutual agreement. It resumed again in February 1992. Defendant told the woman that he was married, but that he and his wife were divorcing and expected to finalize the divorce in July 1992. The intimate portion of their relationship ended in late May 1992, although they remained in contact for several more months. Defendant stipulated that he was not a party to any divorce action.
Defendant called this woman shortly after decedent's death and informed her that decedent had died from an aneurysm. They spoke twice thereafter and, in the early part of October 1992, the woman received an early morning telephone call from defendant in which he said, ...
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