A key witness in the trial of two men accused of killing a Pinyon Pines family was granted a judicial dispensation Tuesday under which he will not have to testify in the murder trial to prevent complications in his unresolved court case.
Jeremy Todd Witt of Cathedral City was slated to appear for the prosecution in the trial of Robert Lars Pape and Cristin Conrad Smith, but after the men’s attorneys challenged the witness’s legitimacy based on alleged “moral turpitude” stemming from acts related and unrelated to the trial, Riverside County Superior Court Judge Bernard Schwartz ruled that Witt did not have to subject himself to examination based on his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Witt is contending with a misdemeanor allegation of violating a restraining order filed last year by his landlord. He’s also on probation for a driving under the influence conviction in 2016.
Pape’s attorney, Jeff Moore, and Smith’s attorney, John Dolan, sought to open a line of questioning aimed at impeaching Witt’s character, and although Schwartz did not find justification for most of the proposed questions, he found merit in the defense team asking others, potentially exposing Witt to criminal liability outside the Pape and Smith matter.
Without Witt, the prosecution will have no option Wednesday but to read to the jury all of Witt’s sworn testimony from a 2016 preliminary hearing.
At the heart of that testimony is Witt’s recollection of a conversation between him and Smith three weeks after the killings in which Smith allegedly remarked that his and Pape’s plans and gone awry, prompting the pair to “torch the whole (expletive) place” on Alpine Drive.
Pape and Smith, both 29, are each charged with three counts of first-degree murder and special circumstance allegations of taking multiple lives. Both face life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted of killing 18-year-old Becky Friedli, her mother, 53-year-old Vicki Friedli, and the latter’s boyfriend, 55-year-old Jon Hayward, on the night of Sept. 17, 2006.
Sheriff’s Detective Scott Michaels testified last week about his encounter with Pape on Sept. 18, 2006, and during the recorded interview, Pape attributes what he knows about the murders to Javier Garcia, Becky Friedli’s “best friend.” Garcia testified last week that he spoke with Pape twice by phone within a few hours of learning Friedli and her loved ones had been killed.
Pape tells Michaels he’d had “no physical contact” with Friedli since their split in January of that year and that she initiated contact with him a week before she was killed, asking that he meet her for a hiking excursion near her family’s house.
When the detective inquires as to what the defendant knows regarding what happened at the residence, Pape answers, “They found three people. Two people were sexless, unrecognizable. One was found in a wheelbarrow — female, about 20 years old. The whole house caught fire.”
Michaels expresses surprise that Pape knows about the charred remains in the wheelbarrow, because that information had not been publicly disclosed. Pape points to Garcia as the source.
Pape goes on to say he doesn’t know who might have committed the murders, volunteering that he’d heard Friedli had “gotten into fights” and that he did not perceive her as “a fragile girl.”
Michaels ended the interview but received a call from Pape the following day, during which the defendant says in the recorded conversation that he omitted from his “story line” the fact that Friedli had “been kind of obsessed with me” in the eight months after their breakup.
“She’s been showing pictures of me,” Pape says. “Javier said she’s got a whole cabinet full of my letters from when we were going out.”
According to Garcia’s testimony, Pape initiated contact with Friedli less than a week before the killings. The witness testified that Pape wanted to see her again and was interested in going on a night hike near her family’s property.
According to Garcia, he spoke with Friedli several times that September day, and in their last conversation at 6:40 p.m., she said she’d donned hiking attire and had received a call from Pape, who confirmed he was “on his way up the hill” to her home with Smith.
Garcia learned early the next morning that Friedli, her mom and Hayward had been killed. An autopsy showed the woman and Hayward were shot to death. Becky Friedli’s death was ruled “homicidal violence” because the exact cause could not be determined due to extensive fire damage.
Garcia said when he contacted Pape, the defendant stated that he had canceled the hike because Friedli had wanted to bring along several friends, vaguely identified as “Marines,” making him uncomfortable about the outing.
Pape denied having access to firearms, but pictures gleaned from his cellphone indicated that he had access to a cache of semiautomatic rifles and other guns, according to testimony.
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