JEFFERSON COUNTY - If Michael Blagg didn’t kill his wife, who did?
It’s a question that the prosecution says essentially proves their case against now the 55-year-old, who is standing trial a second time for the Nov. 13, 2001 murder of Jennifer Blagg.
And it’s a question that Michael Blagg’s public defenders say defines what they call a tainted investigation that is biased by the false assertion that it’s “always the husband” — and proof that the prosecution doesn’t truly have a case at all.
Photos of Michael, Jennifer and Abby Blagg
PREVIOUS STORY: Crime scene where Jennifer Blagg was murdered was 'consistent with staging,' expert says
“There’s no eyewitness, there’s no smoking gun, there’s no ‘this is the definitive evidence that connects him to the crime,'” said Judge Tamara Russell as she struck down a motion by the defense to have the charges against Michael Blagg dismissed. “But it’s up to the jury to determine what they believe.”
Here are the facts the two oftentimes at-odds sides agree on: at 4:21 p.m. on Nov. 13, 2001, Michael Blagg called 911 and said he came home from work to find the back door of his two-story home in a quiet subdivision just outside of Grand Junction ajar. A jewelry box was thrown onto the floor of the master bedroom. There was a large splatter of blood on his wife’s side of the bed that had dripped onto the clean white carpet.
Jennifer Blagg and the couple’s 6-year-old daughter Abby were gone.
June 4, 2002 was the 17th day of a search of the Mesa County landfill. Investigators say their effort each day was guided by the location of trash from Ametek Dixson, where Michael Blagg worked as an operators manager.
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That morning, an excavator unearthed a red and black tent. There were human remains inside, and a leg hung from the bucket amid hundreds of pounds of trash. A severed leg would be found a few feet away the next day.
The body was virtually decomposed beyond recognition but later identified as Jennifer Blagg. She was still wearing her retainer and the shirt she wore to bed. The 34-year-old had been shot through her left eyelid, and there was a 9 mm bullet lodged in her skull.
Friday marked the end of week four of Michael Blagg’s second trial. He was found guilty of killing his wife in 2004, but that conviction was overturned a decade later after a juror was caught lying on her questionnaire about being the victim of domestic violence.
The prosecution rested its case in his second trial on Friday afternoon — roughly two weeks behind schedule.
Much has changed since the Mesa County District Attorney’s Office first presented its case against the former Navy helicopter pilot who is now more than a decade into what was supposed to be a life sentence.
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Back in 2004, experts had to explain how the world wide web works and what it is. The jury was allowed to see and hear descriptions of the internet pornography that Michael Blagg admits caused a rift in his marriage. And some of the witnesses called to the stand 14 years ago are now dead.
Some aspects are the same. Prosecutors still allege that sometime during the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 2001, Micheal Blagg shot his wife in the head while she was sleeping. They say he loaded her body into the family minivan and then threw her into the dumpster at Ametek Dixson.
The defense says a child predator killed Jennifer Blagg and kidnapped Abby.
No one saw Michael Blagg kill his wife or dispose of her body. No one saw a child predator take Abby out of the house. This lack of definitive evidence is proof the jury can’t make a decision beyond a reasonable doubt, said public defender Scott Troxell.
“The only way the court can find that there is enough information to go forward is to presume he is guilty and to rely on inference upon inference,” Troxell said.
Deputy Mesa County District Attorney Trish Mahre says that she thinks there’s a preponderance of evidence that proves it was Michael Blagg, from the 911 call in which he knew his daughter was missing before he actually checked on her to witnesses that saw him carting trash through Ametek Dixson the day of the murder, to expert testimony that called what occurred a “staged domestic homicide.”
Mahre said there was proof the couple had been fighting about Michael Blagg’s porn habit in the days before Jennifer’s disappearance.
The jury had only heard the prosecution’s side up until Friday afternoon.
The defense’s case began with the testimony of Sheri Murphy, a semi-retired CBI employee who was certified as an expert in hair analysis.
She cited unknown hairs found in the Blagg’s master bedroom and in the tent where the body of Jennifer Blagg was found. Murphy only had known hair samples from Michael Blagg and a few from the body of Jennifer Blagg.
There were none for Abby.
During cross-examination, Mahre asked Murphy to discuss how reliable hair evidence is, from the fact two hairs from the same person can look radically different to the lack of ability to determine when and how the hair was deposited.
The defense has been using unknown fingerprints in the Blagg home as well as the unidentified hairs as evidence there may have been a stranger in the Blagg house.
Another witness, Breanna Wieker, took the stand to discuss a strange man she saw walking across the street near the Blagg home at around 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. on Nov. 13, 2001. She said he was wearing a Carhartt jacket, and that she had never seen anyone there — and never saw the man again.
It wasn’t until she saw crime scene tape at the Blagg home the next day that she decided to report the man to police.
“In Grand Junction, it’s a small town,” she said. “You don’t see people walking at that time.”
Testimony in the defense’s side of the case will continue on Monday at 10 a.m. 9NEWS is in the courtroom and will post updates to 9NEWS.com during breaks.
