Erie jury gets 15-year-old homicide case
ERIE, Pa. (AP) – A lawyer for a man accused of killing his girlfriend 15 years ago and burying her body on a beach asked a jury Monday to find his client innocent, saying police botched the investigation and prosecutors have insufficient evidence to convict him. An Erie County jury deliberated for about three hours Monday afternoon in the case against James Fleming. Deliberations were scheduled to resume Tuesday morning.
A 42-year-old married father of one, Fleming is charged with beating 25-year-old Janine Kirk to death in June 1988. Taking the stand in his own defense, Fleming maintained he had nothing to do with Kirk’s death.
District Attorney Brad Foulk – who vowed to resolve the old case when he took office in 2000 – said in his closing argument Monday there is sufficient evidence to convict Fleming. He said there had been a troubled relationship between the two and that, after her death, Fleming told police he knew what Kirk had been wearing and where her body was found even though that information hadn’t been made public.
“She blew off the wrong guy one too many times,” Foulk said, acknowledging that prosecutors don’t know exactly when or where Kirk was killed.
Defense lawyer Tim Lucas, however, argued that there was too little evidence to convict his client, saying there was no reason to believe he couldn’t have guessed, after seeing a report on Kirk’s death on television, that she had been wearing her favorite aqua blue bikini at her favorite beach – Presque Isle State Park’s Beach 3 – when her body was found.
Lucas also said investigators did not collect forensic evidence and improperly moved Kirk’s body from the location where it was discovered by tourists on the afternoon of June 25, 1988.
“As a crime scene perspective, this was an absolutely worst case scenario,” the defense lawyer said, arguing that Fleming’s troubled relationship with Kirk is not reason enough to convict him after all these years.
Foulk – who is seeking a third-degree murder conviction – told jurors that police had no choice but to move the body because of the waves from Lake Erie.
Kirk’s death was initially ruled forcible drowning, but a later autopsy indicated she died of multiple blows to the head.
Foulk would not say why his predecessors did not charge anyone in the case, only that he believed there was enough evidence to prosecute Fleming now.
According to prosecutors, Fleming called police shortly after Erie’s only evening newscast at the time reported that a body had been found at a beach at Presque Isle State Park. Police said he told them the body was that of Kirk, who had been missing since the day before, and described her as wearing an aqua blue bikini. He also said she was on Beach 3.
But a former television broadcaster testified at the trial she did not report the color of the bikini and mistakenly said the body had been found between Beaches 4 and 5.
“Of course he knew what she was wearing. He put it on her,” Foulk said.