10:00 PM PDT on Wednesday, August 19, 2009
A Murrieta man accused of beating his wife to death so he could collect $1.3 million from life insurance policies was "drowning in debt" and appears to have done Internet research on murder methods, the prosecution argued Wednesday during the trial's opening statements in a French Valley courtroom.
Kelle Lee Jarka, 40, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the death of Isabelle Jarka, 40, his wife of nearly two decades and the mother of his two children, one of whom was still an infant at the time of the killing.
Jarka's defense attorney, Erin Kirkpatrick, portrayed him as a caring friend and father and devout Jehovah's Witness who loved his wife and had spent his younger years helping to build churches. Kirkpatrick suggested that Jarka took out the insurance policies because he and his wife had been rattled by the recent death of a close family friend.
According to police, Jarka said he came home after running some errands on the morning of April 28, 2008, to find his house broken into and his wife bludgeoned to death. Police say Jarka killed her and staged the break-in.
Prosecutor Burke Strunsky said Jarka is "preoccupied with money, status and image" and executed a "well-researched but sloppily executed murder."
The burglary, according to Strunsky, was "transparently staged," with valuable items such as a laptop and a wad of cash left behind and drawers removed and neatly stacked.
On a laptop that prosecutors say was used almost exclusively by Jarka investigators found records of incriminating-sounding Internet searches, including "poisons that cause instant death" and "how to medically suffocate" and "when to remarry after death," Strunsky said.
On the morning Isabelle Jarka was found dead, a church elder had spent hours at their home discussing the couple's marital problems and had not left until about 4 a.m., Strunsky said.
Forensic evidence suggests that Isabelle Jarka likely was lying in bed asleep when the first blow was struck and that the killer appears to have followed her, continuing to strike her in the head, as she struggled across the bedroom floor.
Isabelle's mother, Tina Canchola, who lived across the street, described on the witness stand how her agitated son-in-law came to her door that morning talking to a 911 dispatcher on his cell phone and carrying his infant son. Canchola, realizing something was wrong, ran across the street and into the Jarka home where she found her daughter, face down in a pool of blood.
Canchola wept as she explained how she got down on her knees next to her daughter.
"I start touching her legs, her back, her hair," she said.
"Isabelle, answer me," Canchola repeated to her daughter. "She couldn't ... She was already dead."
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