A Baltimore County prosecutor told a jury yesterday that Ronald Edward Keihl pulled off an almost perfect crime when he slit the throat of a 44-year-old woman in her Dundalk home in 1992 while her husband slept upstairs.
But as Keihl's trial began in Circuit Court, his defense attorney countered that police have no evidence to put Keihl directly at the scene and are relying on an alleged confession he made to a fellow inmate at the county Detention Center.
Defense attorney M. Gordon Tayback told jurors in his opening statement that no hair, fingerprints or any other scientific evidence linked Mr. Keihl to the slaying or to the burglary of Patricia Jane Kaczynski's home on the first block of Liberty Parkway on April 29, 1992.
The prosecution will rely on one key witness, David Miller, a former Baltimore County Detention Center inmate who alleges that Mr. Keihl confessed the details of the crime to him in 1992 while they were both confined there.
Because of a twist in Maryland law, the getaway man in the crime, who was convicted of first-degree murder last year, can't be forced to take the stand to pinpoint Keihl at the scene.
David Wayne Couch, 27, is appealing his conviction, which effectively gives him the right not to incriminate himself in Mr. Keihl's trial, even though homicide detectives at Couch's own trial said he told them that Mr. Keihl was the killer.
Prosecutor Jason League portrayed Mr. Keihl as a cold-blooded killer.
"It was the perfect murder, except he made a mistake," Mr. League told the jury. "There came a time on Sept 22 when he became arrested in Baltimore County. . . . The defendant thought he had met a kindred spirit, someone just like him, someone he could tell secrets to. . . . He told David Miller how he entered the house. He revealed all the details of that murder."
Mr. League told jurors that Mr. Miller will testify to details about the slaying that could not be fabricated, such as where the blood splattered in the house.
Mr. Keihl was in jail with Mr. Miller while he awaited trial on unrelated robbery charges that were later dropped. He had been convicted earlier on another robbery charge.
Mr. Tayback said that after Mr. Miller told police about the alleged confession, the prosecutors offered him a deal and dropped attempted murder and handgun charges stemming from a September 1992 incident in which Mr. Miller allegedly fired bullets into the air from his car and rammed another vehicle.
According to police reports, Mrs. Kaczynski, a waitress, came home late the night she was killed, talked briefly with her husband, then settled down on the couch to watch television while Mr. Kaczynski went upstairs to bed.
Mr. Kaczynski said he discovered his wife's mutilated, partly clothed body about 7:30 the next morning.
Police eventually charged Mr. Keihl and Couch with murder, portraying the slaying as a burglary gone amok. Although Couch stayed in a truck during the burglary and killing, he was convicted of murder under a Maryland law that holds an accessory guilty.
The defense attorney hammered at Mr. Kaczynski's opening testimony yesterday, including his claim that because he was upstairs with the air conditioner running, he did not hear the attack on his wife.
Mr. Tayback noted that Mr. Kaczynski waited 46 minutes before calling 911 at 8:06 a.m. to report his wife's death.
He said Mr. Kaczynski claimed at the time "that his wife was suffering cardiac arrest."
In a tape of the 911 call played in court, Mr. Kaczynski clearly told the operator that his wife's throat had been cut.