Son testifies in Geneva murder: Parents fought over 'flirting'
The trial of Shadwick King continued Tuesday, with jurors watching surveillance video of King and his wife, Kathleen, in a bar just hours before her body was found on the railroad tracks on July 6, 2014, and his first police interview after his wife's body was found.
The couple's oldest son also testified the couple had argued because she was spending more time talking to friends than her husband.
The 10-year-old, who is the oldest of the couple's three boys, testified that his father swore at the boy's mother and threw her phone in a lake behind a relatives house during visit to the boy's grandparents home last summer.
“My dad threw it in the lake,” the boy testified. “My mom had friends, and my dad thought that she was flirting with them, starting to talk to them more than him.”
Prosecutors say King, 47, strangled his wife in jealous rage after she began an emotional affair via text and social media with a 22-year-old she had met during Army training in Missouri and Texas earlier in 2014.
King, prosecutors contend, killed his wife at their east side Geneva home and moved her body to the Union Pacific railroad tracks, staging her body to make it look like an accident.
King's defense team says Kathleen, 32, died from injuries she sustained while jogging.
During the trial, prosecutors have called on experts to testify that Kathleen was wearing improper clothing to have been jogging and her injuries didn't match a fall on the tracks.
Her son also testified that his mother, an avid runner, always went running with her iPhone and ear buds secured in a Velcro armband.
Neither the earbuds or the arm band were found on Kathleen's body, but the pink phone was propped up along one of the train rails, according to trail testimony and exhibits.
Jurors also watched a video, which did not have sound, of the couple in a Geneva bar in the early morning hours of July 6, 2014, along with King's first interview with police after his wife's death.
In it, King outlined their marital problems, said she didn't want to get a divorce and that he used Kathleen's phone to text the 22-year-old man, saying, “Leave my wife alone.”
“I told her 'I'd do anything for you.' There was no bitterness,” King told detectives on the video. “In my mind she made her decision.”
The trial likely will run into next week. If convicted, King faces between 20 and 60 years in prison with no possibility of early release.