Jury: Blagg's wife was leaving
Teresa
hair fixed." Sounds like a control freak, if you ask me.
Teresa
*******************************
The Denver Post
Jury: Blagg's wife was leaving
Panel members say writings convinced them marriage was crumbling
By Nancy Lofholm
Denver Post Western Slope Bureau
Sunday, April 18, 2004 -
GRAND JUNCTION - Michael Blagg liked to refer to himself as "a
troubleshooter."
As a Navy helicopter pilot, a nuclear engineer, a church elder, a
manufacturing-plant manager - as a husband and father - Blagg presented
himself and was perceived as a man good at taking action when problems
arose.
A jury that convicted Blagg of first-degree murder Friday was convinced by
the thread of domestic disturbance that ran through nearly seven weeks of
testimony that Blagg encountered a problem on Nov. 13, 2001, and, with a
cold-blooded narcissism, he fixed it.
His wife was going to leave him, the jury concluded. The jurors are not sure
why. The evidence showed that perhaps it was because he was so controlling
and increasingly used the Bible to keep his adoring and deeply religious
wife, Jennifer, in a subservient role.
In a first interview with investigators after he reported his wife missing,
he told them that the Bible says "you won't withhold your body from your
mate." He said Jennifer took that seriously.
The prosecution tried to show that perhaps his heavy use of Internet
pornography and the sex act that he was fixated on - men standing over women
and ejaculating on their faces - was more than a wife and straight-laced
mother who didn't even want her daughter exposed to Britney Spears, could
bear.
The evidence convinced the jury that Michael Blagg stood over his sleeping
wife during that blustery night in November and shot her in the left eye
with one hollow-point bullet, a bullet sure to cause maximum damage to her
brain. He then scattered the contents of her purse around the bedroom and
took the jewelry that she loved from her wooden jewelry box in an attempt to
make it look like a burglary.
To cover up the time of death - a factor that would implicate him - jurors
decided Blagg packaged her body in a cheap red pup tent and loaded it into
the family van. He drove it away in the dark of night and deposited it in a
filthy tomb, an industrial trash bin in back of his former workplace.
There was no trace of blood in the Blagg home outside of the large stain on
the master bed that dripped onto the carpet and splashed up onto a
nightstand. He disposed of the likely murder weapon, a 9mm Smith & Wesson
that Michael Blagg's mother-in-law testified was always kept in a bedroom
drawer.
Michael Blagg, the troubleshooter, the man whom prosecutor Frank Daniels
called "a narcissistic pig" when the trial was over, had solved a problem.
Four jurors who agreed to talk about the verdict they reached in less than
10 hours of deliberation late last week following a nearly seven-week trial
agreed that Jennifer helped them come to that conclusion through her
writings.
"We all thought she was about to leave him. Her books, her journals, her
notations, ... it was telling you the story of their life," said juror
Andrea Taylor, a 25-year-old who called herself a strong Christian.
That life began on a beach in San Diego in 1987 when Jennifer Loman met Navy
helicopter pilot Michael Blagg. Four years later, they married. Video taken
on a Texas beach not long after their wedding showed Michael happily picking
up his petite bride as they walked in the sand. That video clip, like many
other things in their lives together, would later become evidence to show
jurors Blagg was capable of hoisting his wife's body out of the bed and into
the van parked in their garage.
The Blaggs would have one daughter, Abby. They would move five times in the
10 years of their marriage, a fact that saddened Jennifer, who was so
outgoing, her husband said, "she could make friends with a wall."
But religion guided Jennifer Blagg's life and her marriage. Her writings
show she believed that she must make sacrifices to be by the side of the
husband she adored. She wrote him love letters telling him that, and those
would also become evidence.
The defense would say they were proof that the Blaggs' marriage was solid
and that Michael Blagg did not kill his wife. The prosecution painted those
letters as the writings of a woman trying hard to keep a disintegrating
marriage together.
Jennifer eschewed many activities with friends so she could spend time alone
with her husband and daughter. The Blaggs had few guests to their home. They
spoke on the phone every day to each other numerous times when Michael was
working. Jennifer would let him know when she was going somewhere, even if
it was to the grocery store, one friend testified. He knew her daily routine
to the minute.
Michael Blagg would leave work every day between 3 and 4:30 p.m. to be with
his family, while others in management at the Ametek Dixson plant where he
worked would stay until 5 or 6. That fact earned him kudos from some friends
but only an "acceptable" job-performance rating at Ametek Dixson.
Michael would go with Jennifer and stand by for two hours while she had her
hair fixed. He would watch her so closely on their few social outings
outside of church activities that people took note of it.
To some who testified and to some of the jurors, that attention to his wife
was over the top.
"He was controlling," said juror Todd Hoyt.
Whatever was spiraling toward violence in the late summer and early fall in
the Blagg marriage will probably never be known. They kept their house on a
quiet cul-de-sac closed up and blinds drawn. Next-door neighbor Tammy Eret
thought they had moved out. Michael Blagg would sometimes answer the phone
in the evenings and tell callers, even Jennifer's ill mother, that Jennifer
was busy or not feeling well.
Jennifer and Michael made numerous trips to the doctor in those months
complaining of anxiety, depression, insomnia and a host of other ills.
Four days before Jennifer was murdered, they fought.
Blagg initially told investigators there was no fight. Later, he said there
was an argument over the fact that a "headhunter" had contacted him in an
attempt to recruit him to a job in Longmont. His final story was that they
had fought over his use of pornography. Investigators found more than 1,800
pornographic sites and images that had been accessed on his computers.
What is known and was part of the evidence is that he wrote Jennifer a
letter of apology and referred to the fact that "something went horribly
astray."
On the Monday before she died, Jennifer would note in the third chapter of
the religious book she was reading, "fought with Michael" and ink the date
beside it.
In the last entry in her journal, she would not refer to that fight but
would somewhat cryptically quote Scripture and end by writing something that
has been a sliver of comfort for her family: "For today I have peace."
The pathologist who performed an autopsy on Jennifer's body after it was
found in the landfill seven months later said Jennifer might not have known
when that peace was shattered. She would have lost consciousness instantly
and died within minutes, Dr. Dean Havlek said.
Investigators said Blagg would then have had a busy night disposing of her
body and, likely the body of Abby, who has never been found. Blagg then went
to work earlier than normal.
A worker reported he looked startled and dazed when she ran into him in a
hallway before 6 a.m. He spent an unprecedented amount of time that day
taking trash out for workers. He took out several large loads of cardboard
in what prosecutors say was an effort to fill up the trash bin so it would
be hauled off to the landfill quickly.
He called home seven times during that day to check on his wife. He left
cheery and mushy messages, including, "Good morning, my gorgeous bride" and
"I hope you are out doing cool and nifty things."
Blagg, who had talked to his wife by phone nine times the previous day, did
not come home at lunch to check on her when he couldn't reach her and did
not phone the school to see if she was at her volunteer job.
When he came home from work that afternoon he phoned 911, and as Daniels
would say in trial, "things weren't right from the very beginning."
There was a lot of blood in the bed where his wife slept, Blagg said, and
things strewn around on the floor. He seemed to sob as he said his wife and
daughter were missing.
But he hadn't yet looked in the garage to see whether the van he had given
Jennifer on the previous Valentine's Day was there. He hadn't gone upstairs
to look into Abby's room to see whether she might be there. He didn't do
that until the dispatcher asked about his daughter four minutes into the
conversation.
Blagg's facade of being a devout Christian who was telling investigators "I
am concerned out of my mind" crumbled further when he was observed by
undercover officers stealing items from his workplace two months after their
disappearance. They had been hoping, Daniels said, that he would lead them
to the bodies of Jennifer and Abby.
In a way, he did.
They watched him easily back a truck in the dark into a space near the
Ametek Dixson trash bin like he had done it before.
That observation would lead to their horrific 51-day search in the stench
and broiling temperatures of the Mesa County landfill. That yielded
Jennifer's body and resulted in Michael Blagg's arrest in June 2002. And now
his conviction.
"If it wasn't for that, we wouldn't be here," said juror Mary Gonzales.
Mesa District Judge David Bottger sentenced Michael Blagg on Friday to life
in prison without parole and to lesser jail times to run concurrently for
abusing his wife's corpse and for stealing from his employer and filing a
false insurance claim.
Blagg had what jurors said was very professional representation with Mesa
County Public Defender Michael Eisner. But Blagg hadn't been able to
convince 12 jurors who listened to all the evidence and watched him in court
for seven weeks that he was the devout Christian and loving husband and
father he purported to be.
Jurors said they felt like he tried to fake sincerity as he smiled at the
women, sometimes with a pleading and desperate quality, or rubbed a finger
across a picture of Jennifer and Abby that he would prop at an angle the
jurors could easily see.
"Looking at him it was hard to believe him. He tried too hard to come across
as a sincere man," said 19-year-old juror Melisa Lopez.
Blagg couldn't solve that problem.
Many of those people broken by Jennifer's murder and now Michael's lifetime
behind bars filed out of the courtroom in tears.
"There are no winners in any of this," said David Loman, Jennifer's brother.
tinydancer
"Teresa" <ctf...@comingcast.net> wrote in message
news:_PFgc.167653$JO3.98233@attbi_s04...
> "Michael would go with Jennifer and stand by for two hours while she had
her
> hair fixed." Sounds like a control freak, if you ask me.
>
> Teresa
God he was a narcissistic pig, the prosecutor had that right on the money.
Wonder why he chose the eye to shoot her? Perhaps it had something to do
with his fascination about ejaculating in women's faces? So glad the jury
saw through this pig, killing his own little girl besides.
td
okerry
her
> hair fixed." Sounds like a control freak, if you ask me.
> Teresa
> *******************************
> The Denver Post
> Jury: Blagg's wife was leaving
> Panel members say writings convinced them marriage was crumbling
> By Nancy Lofholm
> Denver Post Western Slope Bureau
> Sunday, April 18, 2004 -
>
> GRAND JUNCTION - Michael Blagg liked to refer to himself as "a
> troubleshooter."
<snips>
> The prosecution tried to show that perhaps his heavy use of Internet
> pornography and the sex act that he was fixated on - men standing over
women
> and ejaculating on their faces - was more than a wife and straight-laced
> mother who didn't even want her daughter exposed to Britney Spears, could
> bear.
> The evidence convinced the jury that Michael Blagg stood over his sleeping
> wife during that blustery night in November and shot her in the left eye
> with one hollow-point bullet, a bullet sure to cause maximum damage to her
> brain.
I can't be the only one who sees the connection here.
okerry
Teresa
"okerry" <oke...@lycos.com> wrote in message
news:ZdSgc.22700$L75.6464@fed1read06...
I noticed it too.
Teresa
PattyC
OK, raise your hands here... all those who KNEW he was guilty right off the
bat. And he did have a rather decent coer early on, at least as to others,
including her mom, saying how wonderful he was.
I am surprised how this one has ended with a whimper. I always find it
goofy that the looking up porn on the Internet thing is given so much
weight..... I mean.. have we all considered how MANY people do that and
don't murder? I don't think looking up porn is all that vital to the big
picture here. \\
PattyC
Teresa
" > OK, raise your hands here... all those who KNEW he was guilty right off
the
> bat. And he did have a rather decent coer early on, at least as to
others,
> including her mom, saying how wonderful he was.
>
> I am surprised how this one has ended with a whimper. I always find it
> goofy that the looking up porn on the Internet thing is given so much
> weight..... I mean.. have we all considered how MANY people do that and
> don't murder? I don't think looking up porn is all that vital to the big
> picture here. \\
>
> PattyC
I was convinced from the get-go that Mikey Blagg was guilty.
Teresa
Kris Baker
I suspected him from the start....and posted it publicly
here on 16 Nov 2001.
I agree about the porno issue. How many times has
*anyone* opened an email, and found porno in it?
Kris