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February 12, 2008 Are women really so fragile?Posted: 12:19 PM ET
NEW YORK – Bobby Cutts Jr., surprising everyone, took the stand Monday and testified that his killing of his nine-months-pregnant girlfriend, Jessie Davis, was an accident. According to his tearful testimony, he pointed his finger in her face, and she bit it. Cutts tried to leave, but Davis grabbed his arm and told him he couldn't. Pulling his arm away, he says, he threw his elbow back, it landed on Davis' throat, and she fell, hard, to her death. That bleach spot investigators found on Davis' floor? Cutts, a former police officer, says he tried to revive her with the bleach, not cover up forensic evidence. He loaded Davis' body in the back of his truck and dumped it in a park, he testified. Watch the testimony This sounds a lot like Joran van der Sloot's recently broadcast statements. He claimed that he was fondling Natalee Holloway on an Aruban beach when she shivered and stopped breathing in his arms. Like Cutts, he didn't call the police or get her to a hospital. Instead, he says, he enlisted a friend to dispose of her body, dumping her in the sea. Are young women really so fragile that we spontaneously drop dead from a bump or a kiss? Are these men so morally bankrupt that their only reaction to a medical crisis is to hide a body? Cutts' and van der Sloot's stories are absurdly implausible, and van der Sloot himself now says he was lying. Yet the "I didn’t do anything wrong, but then I panicked and disposed of the body" defense has worked in a recent high-profile American case. Billionaire Robert Durst convinced a Texas jury that he shot his elderly neighbor in self-defense, and then chopped up the body and dumped it in Galveston Bay. Acquitted. The jury said it had to separate the killing and the cover-up. Still, Cutts' tearful testimony is unlikely to help him. Upended furniture and the disarray of Davis' home indicate a struggle far greater than one elbow strike that hit the mark. The more he spoke yesterday, the less we liked him. He didn't intend to leave his 2-year-old son alone for two days, he says, but he did. Cutts had the right to remain silent, but not the ability. The case should go to the jury late Tuesday afternoon. – Lisa Bloom, In Session anchor Filed under: Trials |
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