Missing cash, a dented crockpot and 'clean' knives : Linsky murder trial closings set amid questions
ALLEN COUNTY, Ind. ---Charles Calvert, the man accused of killing his girlfriend, Marcia Linsky, a local criminal defense attorney of renown, was torn Wednesday between staying silent and taking the stand to tell his version of what happened the evening of Feb. 3, 2024.
After the state rested its case Wednesday, the third day of the trial, Special Judge Steven Clouse looked to Calvert and his attorney, Ethan Myers to come to a decision. Would the defense rest or would Calvert take the stand?
Admittedly, Myers, who has done a more than an adequate job for a client who has reportedly quarreled with high profile criminal defense attorneys and took over the case only a week or two ago, didn’t seem enthusiastic.
Defense attorneys generally aren’t.
But Calvert, 62, is obviously tempted. Five phone calls he made from the Allen County Jail in 2024 proved he has come up with alternate accounts of how Marcia died that day and they were played in court Wednesday.
None of the versions explain the 34 stab wounds to her head, face and torso. Of the two deepest cuts to the throat, one was 2.5 inches long.
“It was an accident,” he told either his father or brother in the first phone call where he was also directing what they should do with his credit cards and bank accounts.
The next four calls were barely intelligible to the folks in the gallery although the jury was given a transcript to follow along. He’d already told detectives that night that she became “very aggressive” and that “she came at me.” He told a sheriff’s deputy on the way to Parkview Regional Medical Center that he defended himself.
But in the jail phone calls, his claims were of a medical emergency variety, coma deaths, maybe some “pushing and shoving.” All accidental.
A crock pot on the floor had a dent in it. With Linsky’s blunt force injuries, amateur sleuths might come to the conclusion she was struck with this most common of kitchen appliances.
Her eyeglasses, found in the kitchen where she was discovered on the floor in a pool of blood, had both Calvert’s and Linsky’s DNA, placing the defendant in the kitchen. But no measurable amount of DNA was found on two knives placed next to her body, one a 13-inch serrated knife.
Both their DNA was on some men’s underwear in the bedroom and on a white shirt stuffed into the washing machine.
Calvert’s DNA was found in his black Mercedes that he parked there and told detectives Linsky’s Grabill address was the one he used.
In a suitcase in the car, there was a laptop and “paperwork of all the property,” Cpl. Everett Hegbli, a crime scene technician with the Allen County Sheriff’s Department, testified. Linsky's property.
Even if nothing of import came from cell phones collected by detectives and even if no fingerprints were found, the weight of the evidence presented during this trial will be hard for Myers, a retained attorney from Covington according to online court documents, to overcome in his closing statement Thursday.
How can anyone claim self defense with 34 stab wounds detectives and people online are asking. Calvert and Linsky were the only ones there, by Calvert's own admission. They were together all day, shopping in the morning and there when a brand new stove was delivered sometime in the early afternoon. The delivery man recalled seeing them, he testified.
Gabriel Furnish, a long time county detective, slipped another detail into the prosecution’s case. Calvert had a “large amount of cash” on him when they picked him up.
Linsky was often paid in cash and kept her own accounting system, dollars wrapped in cash bands. According to Hegbli, there were four ripped cash bands in different amounts: $2,000, $50, $100 and $1000. No bank receipts were attached.
Court starts at 9 a.m. Thursday. Clouse, who lends humor to the proceedings and normally does his judicial work in Noble County, will demand that Calvert decide to testify or not.
Then the closing arguments will begin and Clouse said allows as much time as is needed. A verdict is expected tomorrow afternoon.
Chief Deputy Tom Chaille and Chief Counsel Tesa Helge, the department’s top prosecutors, have presented a large amount of evidence. Many deputy prosecutors, local attorneys and staff have stopped in to to follow the case of a respected colleague who came to a shocking end.
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