By Shayna Jacobs
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT — A controversial forensic pathologist who has weighed in on the deaths of President John F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Anna Nicole Smith's son testified in Manhattan Tuesday on behalf of a man accused of carrying out an assisted suicide on a Long Island motivational speaker.
Dr. Cyril Wecht, arguably one of the world's most famous forensic psychologists, told Manhattan jurors that it was physically possible for a person to kill themselves by repeatedly ramming their chest into a sharp knife as another person held it steady.
Wecht was called by the defense team for Kenneth Minor, who told prosecutors he was paid by suicidal Long Island dad Jeffrey Locker to kill him in exactly that way.
"I don't mean to minimize it — it would be painful, but I'm just saying it would not be excruciating, immobilizing pain," Wecht, 79, of Pittsburgh, argued. Wecht added that it would be more painful to have a gallstone than to stab oneself to death in the chest.
Wecht has testified on the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. before Congressional committees.
Minor, 38, claimed through his lawyer that he was asked to help the motivational speaker commit suicide, but to make it look like a murder and a robbery so that his family could collect insurance. Minor claims he held a knife steady against the steering wheel of Locker's SUV while the 52-year-old dad thrust his torso against the knife as his hands were bound behind his back.
Locker's body was found inside his vehicle near the RFK-Triboro Bridge on July 16, 2009. Prosecutors said Minor had used Locker's ATM card at various machines throughout the neighborhood following the attack, and also sold Locker's iPhone on the street. Minor claimed Locker promised him the use of both as compensation for killing him.
Locker, who was deeply indebted to creditors, wanted to die so his family could collect on insurance policies totaling $18 million, most of which they would only receive if his death appeared to be unintentional, according to evidence presented at trial.
Wecht said the cluster of stab wounds found on Locker's chest would have looked the same whether Locker flung himself into the knife or whether Minor plunged the knife into his chest.
"While they certainly could be inflicted by an assailant in a homicidal scenario, they also fit in with someone repeatedly impaling himself on the held knife so that the wounds are all in that same area," Wecht said.
Wecht added that if Locker had been attacked by someone a "in a homicidal frenzy," he would most likely have had defense wounds, or wounds on other parts of his body sustained as he instinctively tried to dodge the blows. But there were no such wounds found on Locker, Wecht told Manhattan jurors.
After leaving the stand, Wecht told reporters that he personally believed Locker's death was an assisted suicide, and added that he had seen other similarly "hard to believe" cases of suicidal self-mutilation.
"When someone has a great feeling of depression it is amazing what they can do," he said.
A staffer from the city's medical examiner's office testified that Minor must have actively assaulted Locker, that the alternative scenario would have been physically impossible.
Prosecutors, who are set to give their closing statements Tuesday afternoon, said there was evidence to support Minor's claim that he was paid to carry out Locker's death. But they insist that Minor is guilty of murder whether or not Locker wanted to die.
"Is [Minor] an angel of mercy? No, he's the Grim Reaper," Assistant District Attorney Peter Casolaro said in closing arguments Tuesday. "He's just somebody who took money to kill another person and if anything he's an accomplice to the insurance fraud."
Minor's attorney, Daniel Gotlin, argued the alleged killer was taken advantage of by a conniving financial scam artist who targeted a disadvantaged person in a rough neighborhood because he thought he'd get away with it.
The real victim, Minor, was poor and from the ghetto and was the perfect person for Locker to dupe into aiding in his massive insurance fraud plot, Gotlin argued.
"And that's why he was taken advantage of. He's no contract killer," he added.
Minor faces up to life in prison if convicted of intentional murder but the jury may also find him guilty of second-degree manslaughter, which would carry less prison time than a murder conviction.
