Is the evidence 'common sense' or 'illusion'? Jury to decide in Brighton ax murder trial

Attorneys from both sides of a high-profile case known as the Brighton ax murder agreed on one thing Thursday: Evidence in the 40-year-old case is largely circumstantial.

What that means, however, will be left to a jury to decide, as they take on the task Friday of determining whether that evidence – circumstantial or not – is enough to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that James Krauseneck killed his sleeping wife Cathy with a single blow of an ax to the head in 1982.

Prosecutors called upon jurors to “use common sense to draw reasonable inferences” from the evidence laid before them during two weeks of testimony.

A staged burglary scene, changes in Krauseneck’s routine and signs of marriage and career trouble are proof that “adds up” to Krauseneck’s guilt, prosecutor Pat Gallagher told a jury during closing arguments Thursday.

But Bill Easton, one of Krauseneck’s defense attorneys, called evidence pitted against his client an “illusion” crafted by prosecutors desperate for answers.

“This case involves the failure of evidence,” Easton said. “The hardest words in life may be to say, ‘I don’t know.’ The hardest, but the truest. … Go into the jury room gripped with the courage to speak those words. If you don’t know, you have to say you don’t know.”

Krauseneck, now 70, was charged with second-degree murder in 2019.

Prosecutors say he killed his wife with an ax from their garage in the early morning of Feb. 19, 1982, and then staged a burglary scene in the home before he left for work at Eastman Kodak.

Krauseneck has maintained his innocence, saying that he left his wife and 3-year-old daughter Sara sleeping when he left that morning, accidentally leaving the garage door open, and returned to find his wife dead.

More:Brighton ax murder trial nearing end: What do we now know?

Easton, for the defense, contends the case lacks both physical and emotional evidence to incriminate Krauseneck.

His fingerprints were not found on the weapon or points-of-entry at the scene, Easton said.

Neighbors testified to peculiarities they noticed the day of the murder – the garage door light shining after Krauseneck left for work; an unfamiliar jogger in a ski mask on their street and shades at the home closed throughout the day.

After finding his wife, Krauseneck ran to a neighbor’s home for help, who described his face “drained of color.” Could he fake that?

And could he really leave his 3-year-old daughter at home with her dead mother, while he worked all day?

“It flies in the face of human reality,” Easton said.

Defense challenges testimony of forensic pathologist

Easton told the jury that investigators did not follow up with leads on other suspects, including a tip and then a later death-bed confession by Edward Laraby, a sadistic rapist who lived minutes from the family’s home in 1982.

And he took charge at testimony from a prosecution witness, Dr. Michael Baden, a forensic pathologist who put a time-of-death for Cathy firmly before 6:30 a.m., prior to when Krauseneck left for work.

Easton called the testimony “reverse engineering” to fit a story prosecutors had already pinned on Krauseneck.

The original medical examiner for the case, who is now deceased, decided in 1982 that the window for the killing was from 4:30 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. The defense called other experts to rebut Baden’s testimony.

What happened that day is still unanswered, Easton said.

“To submit we can answer that question 40 years after this murder is an illusion,” he told the jury.

But Gallagher told jurors there was evidence “independent of the science” that showed Cathy was killed early that morning.

She was found in bed, covered with blankets, and had a full bladder. Mother to a 3-year-old, Cathy did not often sleep in.

The paper boy told police he stopped by at 7:25 a.m., and didn’t hear or see the family’s dog, as he sometimes does.

A neighbor noticed it was unusual that the blinds weren’t open at 7:30 a.m., a task Cathy may have typically handled.

And a friend called the home at 9 a.m., to no answer.

“Because Cathy Krauseneck was already dead,” Gallagher told the jury after each example.

Prosecution: 'Carefully crafted life falling apart'

Gallagher cited what he called a staged burglary scene: saying several rooms in the home were not ransacked, a silver tea service tray was placed carefully on the ground – so not to disturb the items it carried – and then left behind. Long glass shards were still on the broken window-pane of the sunroom door, making it unfathomable that someone could reach in to turn the lock and still escape injury. All of the weapons used in the crime came from the home.

And Gallagher questioned how Cathy could sleep through the sounds of an intruder: Glass breaking, the dog barking in the basement, and someone rummaging downstairs.

“Logic dictates those things happened after she was killed,” he said.

Gallagher said Krauseneck left the garage door open and locked the dog in the basement – rather than the sunroom, where its food and water bowls were kept – on purpose, to create a scene likely for an intruder.

He pointed to signs of marriage trouble – a marriage counseling pamphlet found in the family car, and pillows and blankets next to a sofa bed – and questions into Krauseneck’s false PhD claims as motive: His “carefully crafted” life was falling apart.

“Nobody else could’ve killed Cathy Krauseneck in that dark bedroom with that ax,” Gallagher said.

Not even Laraby.

Gallagher said little in Laraby’s 2014 deathbed confession matched the evidence in Cathy’s murder.

Laraby said on a summer day in 1981, he knocked on Cathy’s door around noon, struck up a conversation, and then raped and killed her, leaving her naked in bed.

Medical examiners agree Cathy was sleeping when she was killed in February of 1982 and was not sexually assaulted. She was found fully-clothed.

Laraby described her with short, dark hair, as overweight, and said she wore glasses.

Cathy did not match any of those things.

“The closer you look, the closer the pieces just don’t fit,” Gallagher said.

“This wasn’t a rush to judgement,” he said, noting it took prosecutors 37 years to charge Krauseneck in the murder of his wife. “This was an inevitability.”

Jury deliberations begin Friday.

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: James Krauseneck trial: Is evidence in Brighton ax murder case enough?