DENVER — Prosecutors allege that Robert Feldman strangled or suffocated his wife Stacy to death in 2015 on the same morning she was told about an affair, but his defense attorneys argue that Stacy was chronically ill and pointed out that to this day her cause of death is still listed as "undetermined."
After numerous delays, opening statements began at 1 p.m. Wednesday in the trial for Robert who is charged in the March 1, 2015 death of his wife Stacy.
Jury selection began Tuesday morning in the case against Robert who faces a single count of first-degree murder in his wife's death. He was arrested in March 2018.
According to court documents, Robert called 911 on March 1, 2015, reporting he’d returned home to find his wife collapsed in the shower. Prosecutors noted that several first responders noticed there was no water on the bathroom floor, despite Robert saying that he pulled Stacy out of the tub after finding her in the tub with the shower running.
“He had never been to a scene where there was not water all over the floor when a body is pulled out of the tub," Assistant District Attorney Maggie Conboy said about a homicide detective who responded to the home.
They theorize that Robert strangled or suffocated Stacy to death between 9:59 a.m. and noon that day after Stacy confronted him about an affair. Her body was covered with bruises and abrasions, prosecutors said. During opening statements, they noted that Stacy sent her last text message at 9:59 a.m. and then failed to pick up her kids at noon.
Stacy, 44 and a mother of two, had been president of the parent-teacher organization at Southmoor Elementary School in Denver. She died just before 4 p.m. that day.
"We can’t explain everything minute by minute," said Conboy. "We will show [Stacy's] death was caused by Robert."
Four months after Stacy's death, Susan McBride called Crime Stoppers and said she’d met a man she identified as Robert Feldman on a dating website, that they’d had dinner at her home on Feb. 26, 2015, and that they’d had sex that night, according to the arrest affidavit in the case. He told her he was divorced, she said, but after she sensed he was “blowing her off,” she determined he was married and located an e-mail address for Stacy, according to the affidavit.
McBride told detectives she sent an email to Stacy on March 1, 2015. After confirming the couple was still married, the woman sent Stacy copies of emails she had exchanged with Robert, according to the affidavit. The affidavit also said Stacy Feldman called the woman that morning and “told her Robert cheated on her before and she was ‘done with him.’”
According to prosecutors, McBride went to the police after finding the obituary for Stacy Feldman and realizing she died on the same day she told her about the affair.
The defense countered that jurors won't hear any evidence that Stacy brought up the affair with McBride to Robert on the morning of March 1.
Defense attorney Kelly Shutlan said Robert had numerous affairs over the years and that were periods of separation in their marriage. She said Stacy knew of those prior incidents and there's no indication this new affair was any different.
According to prosecutors, the day after Stacy's death, Robert called the coroner's office and asked them not to do an autopsy.
However, an autopsy was ultimately completed that day by Dr. Kelly Kobylanski who could not find any internal injuries that would explain how Stacy died and found further testing would be needed. Prosecutors said during opening arguments that Kobylanski was a fellow and said this was her first autopsy.
Kobylanski found both underlying medical conditions, like cardiovascular disease, and multiple injuries, like hemorrhages and abrasions. But she concluded the injuries could have been the result of efforts to resuscitate Stacy and that drowning “cannot be completely excluded.”
Ultimately, she ruled that how and why Stacy died “cannot be determined.”
Undetermined was a word the defense focused on during its openings. It means "we can not medically pinpoint what happened to this person," said Shutlan.
She said two different doctors ruled Stacy's death as undetermined. She said the only witness who will testify to something different is Dr. William Smock. He is an outside expert, who doesn't have the authority in Colorado to sign off on a cause of death.
Smock, who is a renowned expert on strangulation, reviewed Stacy's autopsy report and other evidence and concluded that she was a victim of “strangulation or suffocation” and that her death was a homicide.
That was a key in moving the case against Robert forward.
For its part, the defense admitted that Smock is an expert on strangulation, but said he's never completed a single autopsy and said most of his research has been done on living people.
"She was chronically sick," said Shutlan, who also noted Stacy had an enlarged heart.
According to prosecutors, Robert initially never mentioned that he came home in the middle of the day, but two months after Stacy's death said he was home during the middle of the day, but never saw Stacy.
Instead, according to prosecutors, Robert said he called out for Stacy but got no answer. He then changed his clothes and worked out and then went to pick up his children.
Prosecutors said Robert was the sole beneficiary of a life insurance policy that paid out about $751,000. The defense pointed out that the policy had been in place since 2010 and said he had also had a life insurance policy.
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Feldman’s trial was originally set for April 2020. But it was delayed after all jury trials were suspended early in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Reset for September 2020, it was delayed again when the doctor who performed Stacy autopsy refused to travel from California, where she was living, to testify, citing the pandemic and her need to stay home and help her son, who was attending school remotely.
This story draws on the previous reporting from Kevin Vaughan.
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