Handcuffs, then chest pains:details emerge in Linsky murder trial
ALLEN COUNTY, Ind. ---It was was the viciousness of the attack that made people put their heads down or turn away when autopsy photos came around.
Marcia Linsky, a few days shy of her 65th birthday, was stabbed at least 34 times, according to the forensic pathologist, Dr. Lyndsey Emery, and there could have been more.
Emery was in Allen Superior Court Tuesday morning to testify on the second day of the murder trial for Charles Michael Calvert, accused of stabbing Linsky to death on Feb. 3, 2024.
Emery counted 22 wounds to the head and neck, five to the torso, three to the right side and four to the left. Linsky, by everyone's testimony, was found face down in a pool of blood and most likely left to "bleed out" for at least two hours.
The deepest wounds were to her throat.
Every law enforcement officer who testified remembered the two knives placed neatly at her side.
Marcia Linsky was a fighter, one who fought for her clients. She was so experienced as a defense attorney after having spent part of her legal career as a prosecutor and magistrate that she could bring hope and help to a client who might otherwise have been swallowed up in an oftentimes cruel system.
Read story from March 2025 with probable cause affidavit details here:
Very likely some of her wounds were defensive as she fought off the brutal attack. Chief Deputy Prosecutor Tom Chaille and Chief Counsel Tesa Helge, representing the state, contend there is no suspect other than Charles Michael Calvert.
Calvert, now 62, looks much different than the mugshot taken on Feb. 3, 2024 when Allen County sheriff’s deputies took him into custody. After 2.5 years at the Allen County Jail, awaiting trial and quarreling with attorneys, he has a diminished look, the air of someone who has seen little daylight and spent too many holidays in a cell. Court testimony indicated he had heart issues in the past.
Cpl. Benjamin Fries with the Allen County Sheriff’s Department said on the stand that it wasn’t until he detained him in handcuffs that Calvert announced he had chest pains. A paramedic from the Northeast Fire Department also reported that Calvert smelled of alcohol.
Fries took him to Parkview Regional Medical Center and during the ride Calvert started to talk of his own free will. The jury and gallery guests heard that audio as well as the prior 911 phone call during testimony Tuesday.
At that point, Miranda didn’t apply, Fries testified. Calvert talked about the two dogs who were found in a closed door bedroom at Linsky’s home in Grabill. Then he repeated his statement about Linsky becoming “very aggressive.”
Fries called his superiors.
“I’m not leaving this guy’s side,” he told them and asked if they wanted Fries to “read him the Miranda.”
Deputy and suspect learned they’d both gone to Ball State University, and although it’s still unclear and no one seems to know exactly what Calvert did or had done for a living, he certainly doesn’t seem to be from Fort Wayne.
Once again, as he did in the 911 call he made around 8:30 p.m., Calvert declared that Linsky had become “very aggressive.” It happened while they were “cutting onions.” When Calvert brought up the knife, Fries asked him how she got “cut up.”
“I defended myself,” Calvert said and self defense appears to be the card he’s playing.
“The details of how you defended yourself is kind of important,” Fries told him, however Calvert stopped at any more explanation after that.
Calvert complained that she cut his hand and he pushed the crock pot, something which will show up on the floor in crime scene photos, but at the start of the interview with Fries he didn’t complain about any injury and and “was oddly well dressed for the time of day,” Fries said.
Calvert said he got his mail at Linsky’s Grabill home where they’d been living together for a while. Several times he mentioned that Linsky was a criminal defense attorney, something he appeared to be proud of and said they’d been talking about getting married.
However, that kind of speculation apparently was about to end. Two dear friends who have known Linsky for 35 to 40 years took the stand and had nothing good to say about Calvert, at least not from what they observed.
Calvert’s lawyer, his new lawyer, Ethan Myers from Covington, did object that their testimony was hearsay, and Helge had to tailor her questioning of both women.
Sheila Hudson told of a time in November 2022 when she and her husband went to the casino in Battle Creek Michigan with Linsky and Calvert.
They separated upon arrival and met up for dinner. While it was obvious Calvert and Linsky had been drinking, Linsky kept herself under control.
Not Calvert, Hudson said. “He was angry, belligerent,” and Hudson said she felt “uncomfortable” around him. She later told Linsky she “did not want to be with him again.”
When she met Linsky in Laotto on Jan. 31, the last time she saw Marcia, “she (Linsky) didn’t want to talk about Michael,” the name they called Calvert. Hudson never heard any talk about getting married or an engagement ring.
Cynthia Hogan, a Fort Wayne attorney now living in Florida, said she talked to her friend Marcia “all the time.”
A few weeks before her death, Linsky and Calvert visited her in Florida. Hogan found him “very possessive” during the five-day visit to the point where the two friends never had a chance to really talk.
More ominously, the last time she spoke with Linsky was 11:48 a.m. on Feb. 3. They talked about another visit to Florida, only this time she would come alone.
Marcia Linsky had so many friends there are some who can’t bring themselves to attend her trial. One close friend said he’d be afraid he wouldn’t be able to control himself.
“I’ll be too tempted to jump over the railing and beat him….”
But of all the people who took the stand, it was her daughter, Elizabeth Schlichter, who was the bravest.
“She was my best friend,” Schlichter said. The day her mother was killed, Schlichter was having a rough day. Her husband had gone to work and she was minding her two children. When she talked to her mother, there was nothing in her demeanor she said that seemed to portend the terrible deed that was to come.
As far as Calvert? “He was always there,” she said. They were planing a birthday party for her mother on February 9, her 65th birthday.
She didn’t find out about her mother’s homicide until the next day, a Sunday. “I started getting texts from my friends.”
“What are you talking about,” she remembers saying to people in a phone call.
She went to her mother’s home and found that cash envelopes kept in a strict accounting system somehow didn’t match up, yet there are no reports that Calvert stole the money.
The trial goes for day three on Wednesday. DNA experts, crime scene technicians and Allen County Police Department detective Gabe Furnish will testify.
There is no word yet if Calvert will take the stand in his own defense.
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