Ciccone trial goes to the jury

The trial of Albert Ciccone, charged with first degree murder for allegedly running down and killing his wife, Kathleen, on Oct. 16, 2003, went to the jury Tuesday afternoon, shortly after press time.

The final week of the trial included dramatic videotapes of the interview by law enforcement authorities of Ciccone the night of the incident.

In closing arguments Prosecutor Aaron Bazzoli contended Ciccone deliberately aimed his car at his pregnant wife, after they had argued and she had gotten out, then ran her down on Ditto Road, killing both her and her fetus.

Defense attorney Terry Ratliff contended that the death was a tragic accident, that Ciccone did not intend to strike his wife with his car.

As the trial entered its third week last week, Kathleen Ciccone's older brother, Christopher Terry, testified in support of the state's theme that the couple had a rocky relationship.

He described the night of his sister Jessica's engagement party, when the couple broke up, less than two weeks before their wedding on Aug. 29. He said that after the party Albert, Kathleen and several family members and friends had gone to a street concert in downtown Boise, during which time Albert and Kathleen began arguing.

Albert, he said, poked a finger in her chest and told her "it was over," then drove away "fast and fearless."

The couple got back together again later that night.

He said that when he found out a week later that the wedding was back on, he told his sister, Kathleen, that he didn't approve of her marrying Albert, that he had seen "some issues," that bothered him, but wouldn't stand in their way.

He said that he talked to his sister the week before her death and told her she needed to leave the relationship, get some counseling, and divorce Albert.

Major Crimes Det. Kathy Wolfe of the Elmore County Sheriff's Office described arriving at the scene of the incident and helping get Ciccone in the ambulance, than began working the crime scene.

She described finding blood splatters on the windshield and hood, and on the right front corner of the car. Inside the car, she found an application for divorce in the driver's side pocket, along with paperwork to obtain base housing.

The divorce papers, she said, were only filled out in two places, listing Albert as the plaintiff and Kathleen as the defendant.

She also said that in July 2004 she and Det. Capt. Mike Barclay had conducted some tests on Ditto Creek Road and determined possible speeds Ciccone may have been driving, which appeared to match earlier testimony that Ciccone was doing about 50 mph when he struck his wife.

But the most dramatic testimony of the week occurred on Friday, when the prosecution showed two video tapes, totalling about five hours in length, of the interrogation by Wolfe of Ciccone on the night of Oct. 16 and the next morning.

At first, Ciccone contended he could not remember any of the incident and several times asked if his wife was OK. He often asked Wolfe to describe to him what he had apparently done.

But slowly, Wolfe, who appeared sympathetic to him during the first interview, holding his hand and placing her arm around his shoulders, began to elicit more and more detail from Ciccone, who eventually appeared to remember everything except actually running over this wife.

He told Wolfe he had been in Intermountain Hospital for nine days after attempting to commit suicide by drinking starter fluid and acetone.

"She (Kathleen)," he said, "tried to leave me four times in four weeks" after they got married. "I had a psychotic breakdown."

He said when the couple first met the were "absolutely smitten with each other" but she told him she was leaving him because she felt trapped and wanted to spend more time with her friends.

In therapy, he told Wolfe, "I was told I was the woman in the relationship, because I paid attention to her needs. She was the man because sometimes she couldn't give a s**t."

He said her friends all were involved in "terrible" relationships, were jealous, and often interfered in our relationship."

He said he was excited about her pregnancy, but she wasn't, often missing doctors appointments.

He also said that his wife "had extremely violent mood swings" and would "fly off the handle" at little things.

On the Monday before her death, Ciccone said the couple had talked about reconciliation, and the day of her death had attended their first marriage counseling session on base.

"We got a lot out in the air. The psychiatrist said she needed to work on her marriage more, and give up her friends a little. I was grinning about that, but then he said I needed to work on my communications skills."

"Last night," he said during the Oct. 16 interview, "I told her mom we were going to try and start over, like dating, again."

Originally he told Wolfe he could remember driving to the Russell Ranch road, just off Ditto Creek, where Kathleen was staying with her mother at the time, and that was the last thing he remembered. "I woke up, talking to my mom on the phone. I don't know what happened," he said. "Nobody will tell me what's up with my wife. Nobody will tell me where my car is."

Earlier testimony had shown that Ciccone had called his parents just after the accident. The law enforcement dispatcher had then conducted a three-way conversation between Ciccone, his mother, and officers in the field looking for him (he had been found standing in the desert about a mile-and-half from the accident scene).

Slowly, Wolfe drew more and more details from Ciccone, who eventually admitted that he and his wife had "had a tiff" while he was returning her to her mother's house. But, he contended, "it wasn't that big a deal. When she got out of the car, she said 'see you tomorrow.' "

During the second interview, the next day, Ciccone admitted to a much less sympathetic Wolfe, that the "tiff" had included a food fight between the two of them, throwing the food they had earlier picked up at Burger King at each other.

Still, during the first interview on Oct. 16, Ciccone eventually remembered getting out of his car. "I just knew she was hurt. She was out of the car, on the ground." He estimated he had been driving between 50 and 60 mph at the time she was hit. "She was just lying there. I called her named. She wasn't responding, and I walked.

"I went for a hike and talked to my mommy. What the hell....

"I didn't look at her long. That's when I freaked out."

He said at that time that she had gotten out of the car to go see some friends. He was tired, and just wanted to go home. "This was an accident," he said, "absolutely."

"I let her out of the car, lit up a cigarette, rolled down the windows and took off. I didn't think I was pissed off, I just wanted to get home and get some sleep. There was no way in hell I'd have a car run down my pregnant wife."

At first, he contended he never saw her, remembering only hitting the mailbox in front of the Shaw residence. Later, in the interview, he said he just grazed her, after he skidded on the road. "I was correcting my car. I countersteered, and she bumped my car and slid off."

But he also recalled seeing her fly past his window just after he hit her. By that point, he had broken down and was bawling.

"What did you think?" Wolfe asked.

"Oh my God, I just killed the person I loved," Ciccone said through his tears.

A few minutes later, during the interview, Ciccone said, "it was an accident. Nobody will tell me if she's dead."

"You know that," Wolfe said. "You know that she's dead."

"It looked like she was dead," he said through his tears. "My wife, my baby...."

"It's so wrong," he said. "My wife and my kid are dead because I was in a hurry to get home and get to bed... She got killed because I was stupid. I wasn't trying to buzz her.

"All I did was hit the gas a little hard and lost control."

During the second interview, held the morning following the accident, Wolfe was tougher, describing the crime scene to Ciccone and pointing out his tracks indicated he hadn't lost control of the car, but had driven straight for Kathleen for several hundred yards. He repeatedly questioned Wolfe about what the evidence showed, acting like he was trying to work out the sequence of events himself. "From the physical evidence," he told Wolfe, "it looks like I did this thing on purpose. Why would I run my wife over, bump her with a car? She's pregnant. Why would I do that?"

At another point, he said, "I left everything on that road."

Steve Neff, a social worker and counselor on base, described the counseling session he had had with the couple just a few hours before Kathleen's death. When they left, he said, "they seemed in pretty good shape. Later, I saw them in the pharmacy with his arm around her shoulders."

On cross examination by defense attorney Ratliff, Neff said he did not have any concerns about the safety of either party at the time.

The trial resumed Monday morning with Det. Wolfe completing her testimony. During cross examination by Terry Ratliff, Wolfe discussed the video tape made during her interrogation of Ciconne on Oct. 16 and 17.

She said that Ciconne was unaware he was being taped and admitted that she lied to him a number of times, explaining that is an interrogation technique used to discover if someone will agree with a statement that is made up.

Wolfe said Ciconne was uncooperative during the interview. "He only offered what he felt I knew and nothing more," she said.

Ciconne had said he could not remember what had happened, but when she drew a diagram of the scene, purposely placing the points of reference in the wrong position on the diagram, Ciconne questioned her accuracy several times.

Wolfe discussed the fact that she takes the same medication for depression as Ciconne, explaining that it corrects a low production of serotonin and does cause loss of memory or a "flat" emotional state.

At the conclusion of Det. Wolfe's testimony, Aaron Bazzoli rested the State's case.

Ratliff then made a standard motion, made by all defense attorneys at that point, that his client be acquitted because he said the State had shown nothing other than the fact that Ciconne had dropped his wife off on Ditto Creek Road and driven off at a high rate of speed.

Bazzoli argued that evidence showed an argument had taken place and Kathleen had walked off in a huff. He said Ciconne had time to consider his actions as she walked up the road while he turned his car around and drove in her direction.

Judge Wetherell denied Ratliff's motion, stating there was sufficient evidence for the jury to infer a reasonable interpretation of what had occurred.

The first witness for the defense was Brant Freeman, a crime reconstructionist hired as a consultant to review the accident scene evidence presented by the state.

During the summer of 2004, he said, he attempted to recreate the scene at Ditto Creek Road, measuring along the same fence line as Trooper Olaso. Freeman said that he found an error in the ISP measurements, which would place the track marks of the car up to a foot off where they are indicated on the state's diagram. According to Freeman's calculations, that would place the tracks of Ciconne's car actually on the road, indicating he did not veer off the road when he struck his wife.

Freeman said that the state's diagram was "an inaccurate depiction of what didn't happen."

Ratliff next called Thomas Reedy to the stand. Reedy and Ciconne are friends who both worked at Charlie's Club. Reedy was also working at Dennis Dillon Auto and sold Ciconne the yellow Dodge Neon SRT4 that was later to strike Kathleen Ciconne.

Reedy testified that when he had test driven the sporty Neon at a high rate of speed on a dirt and gravel road the car tended to fishtail and spin out He noted that when the Ciconnes took the car for a test drive, Albert drove well and "knew how to handle a car." However, Ratliff noted that the test drive was on pavement, not dirt and gravel.

As a personal friend, Reedy said that he had stood up for Ciconne at their wedding. He had not socialized with the Ciconnes as a couple until they were married and said he never saw the them fight.

Reedy visited Ciconne when the defendant was a patient at Intermountain Hospital and met the defendant's parents there. He exchanged telephone numbers with June Ciconne, Albert's mother, who later testified that she had asked Reedy to call her if her son had any serious problems.

Some time after Ciconne was released from Intermountain Hospital, he said that he saw the Ciconnes at the bar where, "Albert told me he was going to be a dad." He said Kathleen seemed to be happy about the expected child but Reedy said he seemed to be even happier about the news than she did.

He said that some time later Ciconne confided that he thought he might not be the baby's father and that he was angry at Kathleen when he learned she had given him a sexually transmitted disease. Ciconne said they were probably going to get an annulment or divorce. Shortly before the accident Ciconne told him the couple was seeing a counselor on base.

Reedy testified that June Ciconne called him on Oct. 16, 2003, telling him Albert was in trouble and had been in an accident. Reedy went to the hospital emergency room and sat with Ciconne. He said Ciconne kept asking where Kathleen was and if she was all right.

He described Ciconne as, "shook up, and scared. He looked tired and stressed out."

As the final witness for the defense, Ratliff called Albert's mother, June Ciconne to the stand.

In an emotionally charged, tearful testimony, she related how she and her husband, Lewis, had visited from Ohio in June of 2003 when her son had attempted suicide and was admitted to Intermountain Hospital.

She said that by then Albert and Kathleen were separated and she did not see Kathleen either at the hospital or any other time they were in Idaho.

She then struggled to compose herself as she recounted the phone call she received from her son on Oct. 16. She said Ciconne was screaming he'd been in a terrible accident and was afraid Kathleen was hurt. He told her he felt like his head and chest were going to explode and said he didn't know where he was.

She spoke to him on her cell phone while she was at work, but after 10 minutes was so upset she had to leave work. When she arrived home she found her husband on the phone speaking with the Elmore County Sheriff's office.

Ratliff then played a tape made by the Sheriff's Office as June and Lewis relayed messages over the two phones between Ciconne, his parents and law enforcement authorities looking for him.

They asked her husband to have June find out where Ciconne was located. She said he saw brown hills, a ranch and some people. When they asked her to have Ciconne describe the color of the house he saw, she said he couldn't, "he' totally out of it... He wants to die."

She said he saw some people coming toward him. Then he screamed, "Mom, there's a cop with a rifle and I'm afraid he's going to shoot me." She asked the sheriff's office to have the uniformed officer back off and tried to reassure Ciconne that the two men were there to help him and would not hurt him. She later told Bazzolli on cross examination that she knew he did not have weapons with him because he did not use them in his job.

She was heard on the tape saying, "run around toward the man in the red shirt," who had previously been identified as extrication team leader Alan Roberts. "Please stop and listen to them, honey. No. Don't run, don't run."

She remained on the phone with her son until he was taken into custody and treated at the ambulance.

During his mother's testimony and the playing of the tape, Ciconne was seen several times to wipe away tears.

On that note, Ratliff quietly excused June Ciconne and rested the defense's case.

Counsel presented their closing arguments Tuesday morning, as the Mountain Home News was going to press, and, after instructions from Judge Wetherell, the matter was given to the jury to consider.

Ciccone is charged with two counts of first-degree (premeditated) murder in the death of his wife and unborn child. The jury, however, if it chooses to find him guilty of the crime, could convict him of lesser charges, ranging from second-degree murder, to manslaughter, to simple assault.

Most observers anticipate the jury returning a verdict today or tomorrow.