A day of contradictions in Erie County Court
Three women give conflicting testimony in Kalinowski trial
One woman, who gave her occupation as “petit larceny,” said Robin Kalinowski admitted killing her husband.
Another woman, a former teacher in jail for allegedly engaging in an inappropriate relationship with a student, said Kalinowski showed no remorse about her husband’s death.
And a third woman admitted that she accused the other two of lying about what Kalinowski said before saying that she was lying about that lie.
So went the testimony Monday in the Kalinowski murder trial before Senior Erie County Judge Michael L. D’Amico, a day in which the jury had to decide what overheard or written jailhouse statements to believe from a collection of accused or convicted criminals.
Kalinowski, 43, has been in jail since she was indicted in November 2007 on murder charges for what she claims was the accidental shooting of her 41-year-old husband Kevin in their Riverside home in 2005.
On Sept. 30, D’Amico declared a mistrial after a 12-member jury at the first trial in the shooting death could not reach the required unanimous verdict after two days of deliberations.
Kalinowski also faces a trial on murder conspiracy charges for allegedly agreeing to pay an undercover state trooper who posed as a hit man $3,000 to kill John F. Carey. Carey earlier testified that he and Kalinowski had an affair that ended the day of her husband’s death. He testified against her last week.
Monday’s court session focused on the testimony of Maryann Saddlemeyer and Cara L. Dickey, who both said Kalinowski made incriminating admissions to them about the death of her husband, Kevin Kalinowski.
Defense lawyer John K. Jordan spent much of his lengthy cross-examination of the two attacking their credibility.
Laurie Lee Sanchez, a third witness who was going to testify for the defense, admitted she had falsely accused Saddlemeyer and Dickey of trying to curry favor with prosecutors by lying about statements Kalinowski allegedly made to them.
Under questioning from prosecutor Aaron F. Glazer, Sanchez testified that Kalinowski drafted a pair of letters that Sanchez signed, accusing Saddlemeyer of making false claims to authorities about Kalinowski. Sanchez told the jury Kalinowski proofread the letters in the law library in the Erie County Holding Center.
Reading both letters and her sworn Dec. 28 affidavit to the jury about the letters, Sanchez said the only honest parts of the three documents were the dates and her signatures.
Sanchez told the jury she had been preparing to testify for Kalinowski, whom she feared, but she said prosecutors confronted her and warned her she faced a perjury indictment for such testimony.
Earlier Monday Saddlemeyer, 45, who gave her occupation as “petit larceny” and still faces five petit larceny cases, testified that Kalinowski told her to find out if a friend of hers could hire a hit man to kill Carey. Saddlemeyer told the jury Kalinowski told her that Carey “had to go” because he had received immunity and was a key prosecution witness against her.
She said Kalinowski gave her crucial information about where Carey and his wife and three children lived, what kind of car he drove and said she hoped Saddlemeyer’s boyfriend could somehow make her former lover “have an accident.”
Saddlemeyer, who shared a jail pod with Kalinowski, said Kalinowski admitted to her that she had fatally but accidentally shot her husband. The shooting occurred moments after they had argued about her affair with Carey and her husband had vowed to leave her, taking their two young sons and leaving her penniless.
After Saddlemeyer left the stand Dickey, 30, told the jury that Kalinowski never expressed sorrow about the death of her husband. She also told the jury that Kalinowski had vowed to flee the area with her two sons if she ever got D’Amico or some other judge to set bail.
Pressed by the prosecutors, Dickey told the jury that during the jailhouse talks she said Kalinowski had initiated since her own jailing in October “she never said that she was sorry that he [her husband] was dead.”
Dickey, a former South Buffalo Charter School teacher, is being held on charges of second-degree rape and criminal contempt, related to allegations she has an inappropriate relationship with a former student who was 14 years old.
Amid repeated objections from prosecutors, Jordan questioned Dickey about her alleged affair and suicide pact with a former student. During her 61 minutes on the stand, Jordan forced her to admit she had been under treatment for sex addiction problems.
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