Colorado Springs man admits to killing wife in recording, claims confessions were coerced

Zachary Dupont, The Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colo.)
Updated ·4 min read
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Feb. 9—"How do you prove a homicide without a body," was the question prosecuting attorney Christina Perroni asked the jury during her opening statements Thursday morning in the trial of Dane Kallungi, who is accused of killing his wife Jepsy Kallungi in 2019.

Jepsy Kallungi went missing in March 2019, and has not been heard from since, but in 2021 Dane Kallungi was arrested in New Mexico and charged with first-degree murder on suspicion of killing his wife.

The prosecution during its opening statement told the jury that despite Jepsy Kallungi's body never being found, there is more than enough evidence to convict Dane Kallungi of first-degree murder in the death of his wife. The prosecution went as far to state during opening statements that it knows Dane Kallungi strangled Jepsy Kallungi to death on March 20, 2019, put her body in the back of his car and buried her in Teller County the next day.

Perroni said that the prosecution will be playing audio tape of two separate confessions that Dane Kallungi allegedly made to killing Jepsy Kallungi; one in 2019 and one in 2021.

The prosecution played a brief clip of one of the confessions during its opening statements where Dane Kallungi can be heard telling his ex-wife, who will later testify in the trial, "I grabbed her ... I was trying to stop words from coming out of her mouth ... It looked like I did some damage."

Additionally, Perroni stated the prosecution intends to have friends, family and even the man whom Jepsy Kallungi had a relationship with outside of her marriage testify during the trial to prove that Jepsy Kallungi is no longer alive.

Dane Kallungi's attorney Jonathon Stafford during the defense's opening statement claimed that his client is innocent of killing his wife, and that the confessions from Dane Kallungi that the prosecution's case hinges on were coerced out of him.

Stafford stated at the start of his opening statements that Dane Kallungi said to his father at one point "I'll even confess to something I didn't do."

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Stafford alleges that his client confessed because his ex-wife claimed she wouldn't allow him to see his son unless he "did the right thing," and that he confessed to CSPD detective Mike Lee in 2021 because he told Dane Kallungi that he would "help him," if he did.

Following opening statements four witnesses testified in court in the morning portion of the trial to establish the timeline in which Jepsy Kallungi went missing, with two CSPD police officers stating they performed wellness checks on the Kallungi's apartment in Colorado Springs three times in late March and early April. Both officers testified that there was no answer at the apartment when they performed the wellness checks.

CSPD detective Lee testified in the afternoon that during the search of the Kallungi's apartment on April 4, 2019, they did not find any items that would've belonged to a woman, or specifically Jepsy Kallungi, in the couple's apartment. Lee and the manager of the apartment complex testified that they believe Dane Kallungi had left Colorado to stay with his father in California by the time CSPD investigated his apartment.

In the afternoon portion of the hearing the prosecution called the man whom Jepsy Kallungi was having a sexual relationship with outside of her marriage to testify. The man testified that he and Jepsy Kallungi were seeing each other, but that he hadn't heard from her since the last time he saw her in March 2019.

During cross-examination the man told Stafford that Jepsy Kallungi had told him around a week prior to her disappearance that "she was done living in the United States," and that she was considering moving back to the Philippines. The man added that he assumed Jepsy Kallungi had moved back to the Philippines when he stopped hearing from her in March 2019.

Dane Kallungi's trial is expected to last up to two weeks; he is accused of first-degree murder and tampering with a deceased human body in Jepsy Kallungi's alleged death.

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