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January 31, 2008
Posted: 11:56 AM ET
ELKHORN, Wisconsin – The jurors in the antifreeze poisoning case of Wisconsin v Mark Jensen can take notes but I didn’t realize how many notes they were taking until I started counting notebooks.
Julie Jensen documented her suspicions in a letter weeks before her death.
Although I can only see the front row, one juror is on her fourth notebook, another on her third. Now, don’t think the testimony has gotten so boring that I’m counting notebooks! It is still riveting. Detective Paul Ratzburg, the lead investigator, has taken the stand. He questioned Mark Jensen for more than seven hours in April 1999. During that interrogation the widowed husband denied that he had an affair with Kelly LaBonte before wife Julie passed away. We now know from Kelly’s own testimony that Mark’s statement is false. When Jensen was questioned in ’99, the detective testified, toxicology results had come up negative for antifreeze. But the detective did have that letter from Julie written by her own hand several weeks before her death. Julie wrote she believed her husband was trying to poison her. If she was found dead, Julie wrote, Mark should be their suspect. (I saw that letter up close after court. It was hand-written on loose leaf 3-hole punched notebook paper.) Detective Ratzburg showed the jury a blue bowl and a pink bowl he took from the nightstand next to Julie’s bed. The blue bowl contained macaroni and cheese and the pink bowl had crackers. The jury had some chuckles when he testified that although the food was preserved as evidence, mice had gotten to it through the years and had eaten the evidence. He made sure, however, to point out that the testing had already been done for ethylene glycol, the key ingredient in antifreeze. The result? Negative for any type of poison. Coming up: About 2 hours of Mark Jensen’s interrogation with the detective. It was all videotaped, although Mark didn’t know it at the time. I believe some of the tape will help the prosecution and some will help the defense. See who you think benefits the most. – Jean Casarez, In Session correspondent Filed under: Jean Casarez Trials |
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