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McFarland manslaughter trial: Law officers take stand

Defense says investigation is flawed

SILVERTON – Testimony from investigators provided more ammunition for the state’s case against Michael McFarland, who is on trial for manslaughter in connection with the death of his wife, Jessica McFarland, last year in their Greene Street home just feet from the room where their two small children slept.

As investigators who took the witness stand described a gruesome crime scene – awash in glass and blood – Jessica’s mother, Linda Davis, and Michael’s mother, Connie McFarland, looked on from the front row of the gallery.

In a written question, one juror asked chief investigator Rosa Perez whether any evidence existed that Michael had tried to help Jessica as she bled out on the floor of their home. Perez said there was no evidence beyond the fact that the husband had said he had.

Perez told the jury that when she interviewed the husband for more than 3½ hours after his wife’s death, he initially waived his rights to an attorney, until she told him she knew he was only telling “part of the truth.”

Then, she said, “he said, ‘I want to talk to my dad about getting an attorney.’”

Perez said she knew he wasn’t telling the whole truth because Ladonna Jaramillo – the neighbor who called 911 the night of Jessica’s death – already had informed investigators that Michael told her he’d hit Jessica with a bottle.

Meanwhile, defense attorney Joel Fry continued to insist that law enforcement’s investigation of Jessica’s death was warped from the outset by the police’s false assumptions about both the nature of the crime and his client’s guilt – assumptions that, in Fry’s telling, all emanated from Jaramillo’s unreliable claims.

CBI Major Crimes Investigator Jeff Brown told the courtroom that the forensic evidence proved that Michael threw a mug at Jessica, killing her.

Fry countered that this was inconsistent with the apparently confessional statements attributed to Michael by Jaramillo. He said a bottle and a mug were utterly different objects.

Brown responded that the difference was merely semantic, saying, “as far as I know, a broken glass killed Jessica McFarland,” and the broken glass mug had miraculously been reconstructed by FBI scientists.

Later, when Brown said he hadn’t sent the mug for fingerprinting, Fry said, “My client is accused of killing his wife and the mother of his two sons by throwing a mug ... and you don’t think it’s significant to test the mug for his fingerprints to see whether or not he touched the mug?”

Brown stuck to his guns, saying, “I don’t think it would have been significant. They both lived in this house and touched any number of things.”

Prosecutors asked Brown to explain why he arrested Michael for domestic violence at the crime scene June 6. Brown said he’d come to suspect Michael was guilty of domestic violence for many reasons, including the fact that his wife was dead.

On Thursday afternoon, Bottrell told the jury she’d analyzed glass from a broken window, a broken drinking glass, and a broken mug – and compared them to many samples taken from Jessica’s body and the crime scene.

There was no glass still embedded in Jessica’s lethal wound. But after extensive chemical, optical and fractal analysis, Bottrell concluded that glass found lodged in her other chest wounds “was indistinguishable from the glass in the mug,” Bottrell said.

cmcallister@durangoherald.com

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