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Premeditation may be key issue in Claudia Hoerig murder trial
RELATED: Brazilian magazine: U.S. promised punishment same as Brazil’s
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins and John Cornely, attorney for Claudia Hoerig, agreed Wednesday in opening statements in her aggravated-murder trial that she killed her husband March 12, 2007, by shooting him three times.
But while Watkins told jurors evidence recovered from the couple’s Ninth Street home in Newton Falls proves she killed her husband, Karl, with “prior calculation and design,” Cornely said she acted because she was “enraged” and had been drinking.
Watkins said scientific evidence will prove that the first shot Claudia Hoerig fired came from the top of the steps downward and into the back of her husband while he was putting on his shoes.
A later shot was fired into the side of his head from between 12 and 24 inches away in a manner that proves premeditation, Watkins said.
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“One shot incapacitated Karl. She pursued him from upstairs and finished him off,” Watkins said. Pursuing him that way and shooting him at close range constitutes premeditation, the veteran prosecutor said. Premeditation is a key element prosecutors will have to prove to find Claudia Hoerig guilty of aggravated murder.
Cornely said Claudia Hoerig fired the first shot from upstairs, but it killed her husband, a major in the Air Force Reserves, because he became unresponsive after that.
An expert witness “will say Karl was already dead” when he was shot up close, Cornely said.
“The real question is why? Why did she shoot him?” Cornely said.
Cornely said Claudia, now 54, told Karl she was pregnant. “Her husband said, ‘I don’t care if you’re pregnant. I don’t want this baby,’” Cornely said. Karl told Claudia he wanted to raise the baby that his daughter, then 18, was going to have so his daughter could go to college, Cornely said.
A short time later, Claudia, who had been suicidal in the past, threatened to kill herself while holding a gun, Cornely said.
The two had a “small struggle” over the gun, then Karl told her to kill herself in the basement so she did not get blood on his paintings, Cornely said.
Watkins told jurors Claudia told a lot of stories to investigators the night federal officials flew her back to the United States one year ago after her native country of Brazil extradited her.
“Her story is not in any way reality,” Watkins said during his hourlong remarks. “Her story is inconsistent with the crime scene.”
Cornely told jurors they will “hear from Mrs. Hoerig,” though it’s unclear whether he meant she will testify.
Prosecutors are expected to play most or all of a 21/2-hour taped interview Claudia gave to detectives the night she was flown back to Ohio.
Five witnesses testified Wednesday, two of them gun salesmen who encountered Claudia two days before she shot her husband.
The first was Brian Martin, who worked March 10, 2007, at the former Slug Masters store, a gun shop on state Route 5 in Leavittsburg, when Claudia came in looking to buy a handgun.
He sold her one, which required her to fill out a U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives gun form. On it, she called herself Claudia C. Bolte, her name when she was married from 2000 to 2009 to Dr. Thomas Bolte in New York.
She gave her current address in Newton Falls but said she was born in New York, N.Y, not Brazil.
She also went to the former J&L Shooting Range in Warren that day for target practice, said Richard Slider, who assisted her that day.
He talked to her about different types of guns, and she decided to buy a more powerful gun than the one she had, Slider testified.
She filled out the paperwork at the shooting range’s gun store but didn’t have enough money to buy it, Slider said.
She also gave the New York birthplace and first and last name on that form, Slider said.
The final witness was Peter Pizzulo, former Trumbull County Sheriff’s detective, who explained crime-scene photos and exhibits in the case, including the shirt Karl Hoerig was wearing when he was killed and the gun used to kill him.
Pizzulo will resume his testimony when the trial resumes this morning.