Thread: This Takes the Cake...

... And the pie, and the biscut...

Too fat to murder: accused relies on weighty defence
4:00AM Friday Oct 30, 2009
By Beth DeFalco

Defence lawyers say Ates says wasn't energetic enough to shoot dead his son-in-law. Photo / AP




TRENTON, NEW JERSEY - It is perhaps the perfect modern defence, should it be believed. A man accused of killing his son-in-law says he was too fat to commit the crime.

Edward Ates, a 62-year-old weighing 129kg, is charged with the murder of Paul Duncsak, who was shot dead in 2006.

But in a legal first in the United States, Ates' defence was last night expected to tell jurors he would not have had the energy to climb a stairway from where several shots were fired, or have managed the quick getaway needed to avoid police.

At the time of the killing, Duncsak and Ates' daughter, Stacey, were involved in a bitter custody dispute after their 2005 divorce.

Prosecutors claim Ates drove from Florida to Duncsak's US$1.1 million ($1.5 million) home in Ramsey, 40km northwest of Manhattan, in August 2006 and shot him as he came home from work.

Duncsak was talking to his girlfriend on his cellphone when he was shot. After hearing a scream and a thud, the woman called police who arrived minutes later, but the killer was gone.

Ates was found a day later at his mother's home in Louisiana.

Duncsak was shot six times as he walked down a hallway. The defence says the killer first fired from a staircase leading to the basement, followed by a volley fired from head-on.

In order to do that, the defence says, Ates would have had to run up the stairs - impossible for a man of his size who suffers asthma, sleep apnoea and other obesity-related ailments.

The defence also argues it would have been impossible for Ates to collect all the shell casings and flee the house before police arrived minutes later.
After that, Ates would have had to have driven alone 21 hours straight to his mother's house.

The prosecution, meanwhile, has presented evidence to show Ates bought books detailing how to build a gun silencer, and conducted internet research on how to pick locks and how to commit the perfect murder.

Duncsak's mother, Sophia, has said Ates became vengeful after Paul Duncsak refused to give him US$250,000 in 2003 to keep his struggling golf course afloat.
- AP

Quite an inventive defence I suppose, although a little bit reminiscent of the infamous 'Twinkie defence' in the Harvey Milk killing.

'Twinkie' defense . . . love it . . . and love Twinkies!

If that is all the defense has then the guy will walk free . . . or be rolled out a free man

Dan White. Fucker ended up dead anyway. Only in my home SFO.

he was a regular on the dance floor at the nana disco