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Woman accused of setting up killing is called 'Trojan horse' of the crimeNov 02, 2010 (The Sacramento Bee - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Nadine Klein served as "the Trojan horse," the prosecutor said, bringing in the killers -- including a "Charlie Manson wannabe" -- who slashed a Boulevard Park artist to death in one of the area's most brutal murders in recent years. Klein, 21, who is being tried for murder again in Sacramento Superior Court in the dead-of-night killing of Jim Arthur, sat motionless at the defense table Monday while the lawyers gave their closing arguments. The jury could not reach a verdict in her first trial earlier this year, and Judge Steve White declared a mistrial May 25. Co-defendants Johnathan Allan Baker, 23, and Jeremy Dale Ackerman, now 22, were both convicted of first-degree murder in the June 3, 2009, death of Arthur, who authorities now say was stabbed 176 times. White, in sentencing both Ackerman and Baker to life terms with no chance of parole, called the killing "one I certainly will never forget," a case that "presents all of us with a reality: that members of our own species can commit such an offense." Deputy District Attorney Eric Kindall told jurors Monday that none of it would have happened without Klein. It was Klein, Kindall said, who befriended Arthur, who set him up for a burglary and robbery by Ackerman and Baker, and who led him to his death by arranging for the killers to break into his basement while she smoked methamphetamine with him upstairs. "If it weren't for her, Jim Arthur would still be alive," Kindall argued. "We know from all the circumstantial evidence that they had to get into that home. She's the Trojan horse that got them there." Kindall recounted a two-day meth spree in which Arthur invited Klein and Ackerman -- her boyfriend and the father of her child born while she was in jail -- into his house while his mother was out of the country on a church mission. Klein and Ackerman had been living out of their car, surviving on dope dealing and petty theft. The prosecutor read text messages that suggested Arthur became angry when he suspected them of stealing some video games and demonstrated how Klein sought to work her way back into his good graces by promising to return the loot. Klein told Arthur she was alone and asked if she could come over to his house in the early-morning hours the day he died, according to Kindall. Once inside, she texted Baker and Ackerman and said that she was upstairs with Arthur and that the back door to the house was open, the prosecutor said. After the two intruders got down to burglary business in the basement, she texted them again, saying, "OK, I'll bring him down there. Be ready," Kindall said. Then -- "Trying to keep him up here. Coming now," she texted, according to Kindall. Downstairs, Ackerman smashed Arthur in the head with a skateboard and helped Baker tie him up, according to the DA. The evidence showed Baker had tattoos with insignias emblematic of a white supremacist who also favors Satanism. He's the one Kindall described as the "Charlie Manson wannabe." And it was Baker, according to the evidence, who stuck a gun in Arthur's mouth and flew into the stabbing frenzy when he learned Arthur was gay. The prosecutor said that Klein knew about the burglary and the robbery, and that under the state's felony murder rule, she was guilty of first-degree murder in the death that resulted. Klein's lawyer, Paul Irish, told the jury repeatedly that there are other "reasonable inferences" that could be drawn from the text messages. Namely, she didn't send them -- Ackerman did, Irish argued, which would have had the co-defendant running up and down the stairs during the attack in the basement that Klein has previously testified began with her boyfriend's assault with the skateboard. Irish said Klein knew nothing about the robbery and burglary, she thought Ackerman only was going to confront Arthur for accusing him of stealing the video games. "The issue here is what Nadine Klein knew before the actual death of Mr. Arthur, before going into that residence, if she went into that residence with the intent to aid anybody," Irish said. The closing arguments are likely to conclude today, after which the judge will instruct the jury and send it out to begin deliberations. ------ Call The Bee's Andy Furillo, (916) 321-1141. To see more of The Sacramento Bee, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.sacbee.com/. Copyright (c) 2010, The Sacramento Bee, Calif. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com, e-mail [email protected], or call 866-280-5210 (outside the United States, call +1 312-222-4544). |