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Hoerig cross-examination begins today
By ED RUNYAN
runyan@vindy.com
WARREN
When testimony wrapped up for the day Tuesday in the Claudia Hoerig aggravated murder trial, jurors had heard six hours of explanations from Hoerig about why she killed her husband, Karl, March 12, 2007.
They heard her live testimony for three hours Tuesday afternoon as the first defense witness in the trial.
Last week, jurors heard nearly three hours of videotaped statements she gave to a detective the day she was returned to the United States from Brazil to face trial in her husband’s death.
Today, the panel of 10 men and two women are likely to hear several more hours of explanations when prosecutors cross-examine Hoerig, 54.
The Brazilian native who moved to New York when she was 24 spoke rapidly through much of the testimony. Defense attorney John Cornely frequently asked her to hold up and allow him to redirect her because she had a lot to say on many subjects.
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Claudia Hoerig
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The Claudia Hoerig aggravated murder trial has adjourned for the day following about three hours of testimony from the defendant. Cross examination will begin in the morning. About two hours into her testimony today, Hoerig described her decision to kill herself when her husband, Karl, came home March 12, 2007, if Karl did not support her in her pregnancy. As she discussed in an earlier videotaped interview with police, she testified to killing Karl when he refused to support the pregnancy.
These included the way she and Karl met on a dating service in 2005, their marriage 50 days later, Karl’s decision to leave her 30 days later to get three to four months of training to fly commercial jets, their marital woes, Karl’s peculiar sexual interests, his controlling behavior over her, their fights over several pregnancies, her multiple suicide attempts, Karl’s depression over his failed attempts at perfection, her psychiatric hospitalization, the killing of Karl, her failed suicide attempt afterward and her father’s first-ever expression of love when she returned to Brazil.
On the subject of her father, she became emotional, saying her father “directed” her on everything she should do so she could fly back to Brazil after Karl’s death even though she intended to kill herself when she got there.
That’s when her father told her he loved her for the very first time. “He brought out the little girl in me,” she said.
She testified that the day she killed Karl, she was going to tell him she was pregnant. If he accepted the news, things would be fine. But if he did not accept it, she was going to kill herself, she said.
Not only did he not accept her news, he told Claudia he was going to adopt his daughter’s unborn child so his daughter could go to college, she said.
“It was such a betrayal. I felt so hurt by him saying that he was choosing between another baby and my baby,” she said.
Karl locked the bedroom door and took a shower while Claudia thought about shooting herself to death, she said.
“My mind was racing both directions,” she said – killing herself and trying again to convince Karl to support the pregnancy.
She drank “moonshine” and armed herself with a gun she had bought two days earlier. She decided to point it at her own head when he came out of the bedroom to show him how serious she was, she said.
When that confrontation happened, they tussled on the landing on the second floor outside the bedroom, then she tried to talk to Karl again. But he just shook his head “like we are done talking,” she said.
She told him she was going to kill herself.
“He said that was a good idea. Why ... don’t I wait for him to leave the house and then go to the basement and shoot myself in the basement so I don’t get blood on his paintings,” she said.
Later in the testimony, when it got close to 4:30 p.m., Cornely tried to quickly close Claudia’s testimony by addressing the central point of the trial: Why did Claudia kill Karl?
She said Karl’s remarks about her blood on his painting and his refusal to support her pregnancy and instead raise his daughter’s baby were the reasons she killed him, she said.
“If he’d not said the words he said to you while you were on the landing, would you have killed him?” Cornely asked her.
“Oh, no, he would be alive now and I would have been dead,” she said of her planned suicide.
“So you killed him because you were upset about what he said to you?” Cornely asked.
“I thought it was something you don’t tell anybody and mainly your wife that’s carrying your child,” she said. “I lost control of myself.”
She said she offered a variety of ways that they could have their baby, but he wouldn’t agree.
“Why can’t I have this child? Why don’t I have the right to be a mother? I never planned on being a mother, but it’s different when you actually have that inside of you.”
The trial resumes at 9 a.m. Claudia’s defense team has said it will present two other witnesses before the trial ends.