Accused assailant claimed devil made him do it

July 7, 2010

By Jeff Lehr
Globe Staff Writer

PINEVILLE, Mo. — Attorneys for a Neosho man who is accused of stabbing a woman with a barbecue fork and sexually assaulting her with a miniature replica baseball bat maintain that their client was under a delusion that he had died and the devil had taken over his body.

The trial of Kevin A. Todd, 49, began Wednesday in McDonald County Circuit Court on a change of venue from Newton County.

Todd faces felony counts of assault, rape, sodomy, felonious restraint and armed criminal action in the battery of a 55-year-old woman Sept. 5-6 of last year inside his home in Neosho. The trial is expected to take two or three days.

Bill Dobbs, an assistant Newton County prosecutor, told jurors during opening statements that the woman went to Todd’s home the afternoon of Sept. 5, and he pulled her inside and began stabbing her with a two-pronged barbecue fork and then punching her.

“He was angry,” Dobbs said. “He called her a series of names. He claimed she was trying to ruin him and wouldn’t have anything to do with him.”

Todd forced her out of her clothes, tied her up naked and bloodied, and shut her in a closet, Dobbs said. She was left there for some time, throbbing in pain from stab wounds to her upper torso and in fear of what he might do next, Dobbs said.

Todd eventually dragged her out of the closet and beat her again, then put her in a bathtub, climbed in with her and took a shower, the prosecutor said. The defendant decided after the shower to go to a store for cigarettes and tied her to a cabinet in the bathroom, Dobbs said. Before he left the house, Todd threatened to kill her if she tried to escape, the jurors were told.

The woman was too weak from her injuries to attempt to get away at that point, Dobbs said. When her assailant returned and found her still there, he derisively referred to her as his “good girl,” the prosecutor said.

Dobbs said the defendant then took her into his bedroom and began sexually assaulting her on a bed with a bare mattress, still beating her while raping her and finally sodomizing her with a miniature replica baseball bat.

‘A miracle’

“And then, to (her) what seemed like a miracle happened,” Dobbs said. “He passed out on top of her.”

She was able to slide out from under him and run naked to a neighboring residence for help, and police were called, he said.

Dobbs advised jurors that they will be hearing the testimony of a psychologist who believes Todd is a paranoid schizophrenic and that he was in a delusional state at the time of the alleged rape and battery.

The prosecution acknowledges that Todd told the woman early on in the ordeal that he had died the previous night and “the devil took me over,” Dobbs said. But he asked the jury to pay attention to the evidence in the case and other statements Todd made, and to hold him responsible for his actions and find him guilty of the offenses with which he is charged.

Karen Klingbeil, one of two public defenders representing Todd, told jurors in her opening statement that they need to understand her client’s frame of mind. He was jobless and under considerable stress at the time, she said. He had asked the woman to bring his cell phone to him, and that’s why she went to his house, she said.

Klingbeil told jurors that the woman has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and has a previous conviction for falsely reporting a crime. She said a nurse practitioner who treated the woman will testify that she told her that Todd talked about how the devil was telling him to do the things he was doing throughout the alleged attack. The lawyer said jurors also will hear testimony that an examination of the woman found no “rupturing” in the area of her genitals.

First called

Three current or former Neosho police officers and a detective were the first witnesses called by the prosecution Wednesday to testify. The woman has yet to testify.

Officer Dustin Whitehill, who now works for the Jasper County Sheriff’s Department, told the court that he found the woman sitting naked on the porch of the house next door when he responded to a call at 3:41 a.m. reporting a domestic disturbance at the defendant’s home. She was clutching a bloodied pillow to her body and had multiple open wounds, Whitehill said.

Klingbeil asked him on cross-examination if the woman told him that she had been assaulted in the bedroom before being tied up in the bathroom, and he acknowledged she had related that sequence of events. The assistant prosecutor asked him on counterpoint if the woman was distraught at the time and if that might account for this discrepancy between her initial account and her later statements, and the officer agreed that it could.

Cpl. Ericson Mathew told the court that Todd came to the door naked and intoxicated when officers went to his home. Todd was incoherent, his speech was slurred, and he smelled of alcohol, Mathew said.

Detective Michael Whitehead testified concerning various evidence that was photographed or collected inside the defendant’s home after a search warrant was obtained. A barbecue fork was discovered on the floor between the front entryway and the living room, Whitehead said.

A woman’s necklace was found on a bloodied carpet in the living room, he said. A replica baseball bat and a massage device were on the floor next to a bed in the bedroom, the detective said. The bed bore apparent bloodstains on its bare mattress, he said.

Also found were a pile of women’s clothing with apparent bloodstains in the bathroom, some men’s jeans with stains in the bedroom, and blood splatter and smears on the walls of the living room and bedroom, on a closet door and inside the closet, Whitehead testified. He said the evidence included handprints in blood on the trim of an interior doorway and on the wall of the bedroom.

Desperate plea

“There were times when she asked him to just go ahead and kill her,” a prosecutor told jurors Wednesday in the trial of Kevin Todd.

From: http://www.joplinglobe.com/crime_and_courts/x1907081412/Lawyers-Accused-assailant-claimed-devil-made-him-do-it