Expert: Victim could have stabbed himself

The fatal knife wounds that penetrated Jeffrey Locker's heart and lungs did not require "superhuman force" and could easily have been self-inflicted, a defense expert said as testimony finished Tuesday at the suicide-for-hire trial over the Woodmere motivational speaker's 2009 killing.

Former Pittsburgh medical examiner Dr. Cyril Wecht, contradicting a prosecution expert, said Locker's injuries were consistent with defendant Kenneth Minor's claim that he held a knife by the steering wheel of Locker's car while the Long Island death-wisher lunged forward onto it.

Wecht also said the tight, 6-inch circle in which all of Locker's wounds were located suggested a cooperative killing. "Usually in a frenzied knife attack, they [wounds] will be in different parts of the body because the person being assaulted will be moving and trying to evade the assailant," Wecht testified.

Minor, 38, is charged in State Supreme Court in Manhattan with second-degree murder in the July 16, 2009, Harlem killing of Locker, 52, who was deeply in debt and had just bought millions in life insurance for his family. Minor claims Locker gave him an ATM card to help in a suicide.

The prosecution has not disputed that claim, but insists that Minor plunged the knife into Locker, making it murder. The defense says it was an assisted suicide, which is a defense to murder. The judge may also give jurors the option of convicting Minor of manslaughter if it finds he killed Locker "recklessly."

In closing arguments Tuesday following Wecht's testimony, prosecutor Peter Casolaro told jurors that a gory stabbing designed to assist an insurance fraud bore no resemblance to the physician-aided killings to alleviate suffering usually associated with assisted suicide.

"Isn't the defendant trying to put a square peg in a round hole?" Casolaro asked. ". . . Is the defendant an angel of mercy? No. He's the grim reaper."

Casolaro also said that Locker - under 6 feet and over 200 pounds - was too fat to lunge up with hands bound from a reclining seat and impale himself. The absence of blood on the steering wheel, dashboard and floor of his car showed that he was held down and stabbed, he argued. "There can't be an assisted suicide unless there's a suicide," Casolaro said. "He did not kill himself. He did not commit the homicidal act. The defendant killed him."In his closing, defense lawyer Daniel Gotlin portrayed Minor as the "victim" of a "con man" and a "shark" who - along with his family - was intent on stiffing credit card companies and defrauding life insurance companies.

Locker's family, according to testimony, has already collected $6 million, paid into trusts that shield it from Locker's creditors. Another $12 million purchased in the months before his death will not pay out in a case of suicide, but one insurance company witness said the outcome of the Minor trial will influence the Locker family's right to collect.

"They got some of what they want, and now they want you to help them get the rest of it," Gotlin told the jury, describing the murder charges against Minor as Locker's "final con."

A lawyer for Locker's family declined to comment on the verbal assault. The jury is due back Thursday to be charged by Judge Carol Berkman, followed by deliberations.