remember, there was lots of evidence at the trial that suggested that the marriage was strong, that ken and anna were quite close. but once in the jury room, some of those members said, evidence or not, they saw it a different way. i think she was a woman that was living under terror with great threat upon her. so he planned it? yeah. he thought about it? yes. he wanted to kill her. i think he wanted to kill her in october. remain seated. and so the jury returned to the crowded courtroom and told the judge they were ready. in the case of the commonwealth of virginia versus kenneth frank creamer, we the jury find the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree. guilty. creamer twitched a little, looked down. they didn t believe him. he looked like a beaten dog. and among his few remaining friends, perhaps only these, the katzes, grieved for ken creamer. they had him guilty before
false. never never. what you re saying now is like basically insulting me. no, never happened. not like the way you were saying it, no. trouble is, that s what the jury believes. that you planned it, conspired about it, set it up, did the whole thing yourself. thinking you were going to get away with it and walk away with a million bucks in cash at the same time. no, not true, not true. it s not true. what is true, said ken creamer, is that he and his wife had a wonderful relationship. never fought in the way the neighbor, the one anna didn t like, described. fighting in the house. anna running out of the house. never ever happened. no. never happened? no, never happened. every family fights. my wife never stormed out of the house. never, no. as for the crossbow, he
still, that prosecution evidence was strong. the firearms expert, for example. in my examination of the crossbow, i found it to be in excellent mechanical operating condition, showing very little wear from very little use. the crossbow, he testified, simply could not have fired without someone pulling the trigger. but the expert only hit the weapon, he didn t test it by throwing it, which is what ken creamer said he had done. by the way, the defense, j.j. mason was an expert in guns, the kind that fired bullets. what did he know about a crossbow? so how, asked the defense, could anyone rely on this expert s opinion? time for the defense to make its own case with some courtroom drama. judge, i m going to ask the court to indulge me with one more physical demonstration. defense attorney gregory turpan would show right here in court how the weapon could have fired accidentally. the right decision? well, maybe not.
i buy my wife jewelry, whatever she wants. i m asking you for the investigation, ken. i didn t you need to relax. i mean, i love my wife so much. i know you do. why would i i would never do anything to my wife. and my son. i love my son. of course, ken creamer was exactly right, this officer was very suspicious of him. i don t know! anna would put a loaded crossbow i don t know! i don t know! okay. kenny, kenny, you got to calm down. i can t. ken creamer was the picture of a grief-stricken man, but his answers, decided police, just didn t add up. what happened to ken s wife anna simply couldn t have been an accident, could it? they arrested him, charged him with murder. and what about the long, slow business of collecting evidence for a trial? detectives say what happened yesterday was no accident. this time, they say, it was a homicide.
refrigerator, for example? and how did it land? we did have the weapon in our jury room. and some of the men tried to, you know, get a feel for how it loaded up. it takes a lot of strength to load that. but as they looked at the evidence and how the arrow that killed the woman, it went in straight. as they re-read ken creamer s testimony, his memory of the careless toss, the bag hitting the fridge, the loaded crossbow going off it physically was not possible. the physics of it disallowed it. then there was the neighbor, randall howes, whose memory suggested creamer staged the scene to make it look more like an accident. what was it that persuaded you that he was a credible witness? his character on the witness stand. just an upright good man. yes. could he have been mistaken, do you think? no, i don t think there was