Murder trial opens for man suspected of pushing wife and son off 100-foot cliff
Patty
Duke murder trial opens
By JEFF GEARINO
Southwest Wyoming bureau
Casper Tribune
August 14, 2002
GREEN RIVER - CST - James Robert Duke murdered his wife and only son
in cold blood six years ago to collect $60,000 in insurance money,
Sweetwater County prosecutors alleged Tuesday.
Duke might have gotten away with the 1996 crime if he hadn't tried to
arrange a similar fate for his mother and father a few years later,
Sweetwater County Attorney Harold Moneyhun said during opening
statements at Duke's murder trial, which began Monday.
But Duke's defense attorney, LaVoy Taylor, disputed the prosecution's
account of the incidents leading up to the Aug. 10, 1996, deaths of
Liana Duke, 22, and 5-year-old Erik Duke.
Taylor called the death of Liana and Erik a "horrible accident" that
was not the fault of, or caused by, Duke, who is now 29.
Moneyhun said Duke committed a crime so abhorrent -- pushing his wife
and 5-year-old son off a 100-foot cliff to their deaths at the Flaming
Gorge Reservoir -- that even police investigators had a hard time
convincing themselves it was true.
"He almost got away with murder ... and he might have but for the fact
he tried to do it again," Moneyhun said.
"This was not a tragic accident as the defendant always claimed; this
was a cold, calculated murder," the prosecutor said. "This was a
simple plan to get rich and it was a tried and true plan ... killing
family members and collecting the life insurance."
But the defense portrayed the prosecution's "star witness" against
Duke as a heavy drug dealer and alcoholic whose testimony can't be
believed by the seven-man, five-woman jury.
"The evidence will show that (the defendant) did not kill his wife and
son," Taylor said. "I don't believe the state can prove that beyond a
reasonable doubt."
Duke is charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths
of his wife and son, and two counts of soliciting the felony/murder of
Liana and Erik Duke.
He is also accused of two counts of soliciting the murder of his
parents, James Larry and Roberta Duke of Green River, between October
1998 and January 1999.
Duke is already serving a 10-year sentence in Texas after pleading
guilty to a federal charge of conspiracy to use a telephone to plot
his parents' murders during that same period.
Prosecutors said most of the state's case against Duke is
circumstantial and may require more than 50 prosecution witnesses to
fully explain to jurors.
Moneyhun said much of the evidence against Duke will be based on three
telephone conversations contained in federal court documents dealing
with Duke's guilty plea on the federal charge.
According to federal court documents, recorded phone conversations
between October 1998 and January 1999 show Duke offered Roger
Brauburger of Green River $20,000 to kill his parents.
Moneyhun said Brauburger also alleges that Duke solicited him to
murder his wife and child prior to their 1996 deaths.
The prosecution believes Duke murdered his family to collect $60,000
in insurance money and contends that Duke quickly spent all of that
money on cars and vacations and was virtually broke by the fall of
1998.
Needing money, Duke then tried to solicit Brauburger to shoot and kill
his parents so that Duke could collect the approximately $200,000 in
insurance money and assets he would inherit, Moneyhun alleged.
"You'll hear him speak and nonchalantly order the murder of his mother
and father as if he was ordering a pizza, like a routine business
transaction," Moneyhun said. "And for Duke, that's what it was, a
business transaction."
Who to believe
The prosecution will try to paint a grim picture of Duke as a greedy,
emotionless husband who was bitter at having to marry his wife when
she was pregnant and who never was able to bond in a normal way with
his son. But defense attorneys maintain Duke had a good relationship
with his wife and child and had no reason to kill them.
Using slides of the crime scene to mark his points, Moneyhun said
authorities and emergency technicians who arrived at the scene in 1996
suspected -- in part by Duke's casual demeanor and lack of emotion --
a crime had been committed, but had no physical evidence to back up
that contention.
The case was ruled accidental, but was kept open because police
questioned how the victims came to picnic on such a high, precarious
cliff. And they noticed Duke's "varying and conflicting accounts" of
the incident, Moneyhun said.
"The defendant also benefited from the natural human reaction of
people not wanting to believe that anyone could be capable of
purposely killing a 5-year-old boy," he said.
But Taylor said the Dukes had not arrived at their picnic destination.
Rather, the family had lost its way and pulled over at the high
vantage point to try and find the right road. "It was a damned
dangerous place, but you don't see that at first," Taylor said.
Moneyhun said Brauburger will testify during the trial that Duke tried
to hire Brauburger to kill his wife and child for $15,000 in early
1996.
Brauburger will also testify that Duke told him "that I've done family
before and I don't want to have to do it again," Moneyhun told jurors.
But Taylor said -- with no eyewitnesses and no physical evidence --
the state "has hung its hat in this case" on the testimony of
Brauburger.
"If you believe (Brauburger's) story, that's your privilege," Taylor
said.
"But are you going to trust the testimony of a known drug abuser and
drug dealer?"
Taylor said the defense will prove "this was an accident ... that Mr.
Duke suffered a great loss, but our evidence will show this was a
horrible accident."
He cautioned the jury to not be "prejudiced" because of newspaper
accounts of the incident "or from stories you've heard about what
Brauburger, a drug addict, has built up in his own mind about what
happened."
As for the other prosecution witnesses, Taylor said the state would be
calling "a lot of witnesses who don't really know what happened, who
weren't there and don't know the thought processes" of Duke.
Taylor also asked the jury not to make "the jump from something my
client plea-bargained to when he was facing 60 years ... and accepted
10 years ... when you hear the testimony, you might even change your
mind on those two counts."
Duke, who was led to and from the courtroom in leg shackles and
handcuffs, rarely looked at the jury during opening argument and sat
mostly expressionless, largely concentrating on the attorney's
statements.
The trial, presided over by Judge Jere Ryckman, resumes this morning
at 9 a.m. in 3rd District Court. Prosecutors said the trial could last
up to three weeks. Moneyhun said the jury will be taken to the cliffs
where the incident happened.
tiny dancer
"Patty" <eartha...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:f0e77308.02081...@posting.google.com...
> http://www.wyonow.com/NEWS/HEAD/14Duke.html
> Duke murder trial opens
> By JEFF GEARINO
> Southwest Wyoming bureau
> Casper Tribune
> August 14, 2002
>
> GREEN RIVER - CST - James Robert Duke murdered his wife and only son
> in cold blood six years ago to collect $60,000 in insurance money,
> Sweetwater County prosecutors alleged Tuesday.
What a horrible crime.........
td