Closing arguments in Mastic murder trial

A Suffolk prosecutor acknowledged Monday to a jury that no physical evidence linked a Mastic man to the woman he's charged with killing, but said it didn't matter because the other evidence against him is so compelling.

Jurors Monday heard closing arguments in the case against Guenter Wende, 44. He is charged with second-degree murder in the October 2009 stabbing of Laura Pizzini, 25, in her Mastic apartment after police said he stalked her for months. Deliberations begin Tuesday after Suffolk County Court Judge Barbara Kahn instructs jurors on the law.

Assistant District Attorney Robert Biancavilla agreed with defense attorney Jason Bassett about the lack of blood, DNA, fingerprints or other physical evidence pointing toward Wende, but they differed on the significance.

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence," Biancavilla said. He explained the lack of Pizzini's blood on Wende by noting she bled internally after being stabbed twice in the torso. In addition, he noted the only clothing not thrown in soiled piles around Wende's Mastic apartment were the clothes he wore the night Pizzini died.

"They were cleaned like they were new," Biancavilla said.

But Bassett argued that the lack of forensic evidence drove homicide detectives to beat a confession out of Wende. He said marks on Wende's face came from Det. Michael Mahan's efforts to get him to crack.

"Detective Mahan knew he needed this confession. . . . It's more likely that he banged Guenter Wende's head against the wall, rather than this embarrassing fiction that he did it himself," Bassett said. "All they have besides this highly questionable confession is a lot of innuendo and zero physical evidence."

He said police failed to investigate Pizzini's recent boyfriends in their haste to focus on Wende.

But Biancavilla ridiculed that as the "Is it possible?" defense, noting no evidence pointed toward other men. Only Wende was so obsessed with Pizzini that he shadowed her at her job, stared at her at her favorite bar and grew agitated when she was in the company of other men, he said.

He confessed not because he was beaten, but because detectives boxed him in during their interrogation, he said. "He's a killer and a liar," Biancavilla said. "If you ask the liar enough questions, he'll trip up."

With a surveillance video playing of Pizzini and Wende at the bar shortly before she was killed, Biancavilla said she ignored him for much of that evening while making social plans with another man. She left the bar, and he followed, telling a bartender, "I'm going to get her," Biancavilla said.

"This was the last straw that he could deal with," he said. "Murder is just another form of control. Now she's no longer with other men. Now he will always know where she is."