With Michael Kerkowski and his girlfriend, Tammy Fassett, missing, Hugo Selenski set about trying to get money from Kerkowski’s parents, a former associate testified Tuesday.
But as the months dragged on and the Kerkowskis grew dubious about Selenski’s claims that their son had fled and was mounting a new legal defense in a drug case against him, they gave Patrick Russin a note with questions for Selenski that only their son could answer, Russin testified Tuesday in the ninth day of Selenski’s double-murder trial.
The questions were never answered.
“He said he couldn’t get in touch with Michael, that he’d gone underground,” Russin said of Selenski.
In fact, prosecutors said the couple was underground — buried by a well in Selenski’s backyard after being strangled for drug money.
Russin, 44, earned the moniker “Pat the rat” after testifying at Selenski’s first murder trial in 2006, a trial that ended with Selenski acquitted of gunning down two drug dealers during a crack deal at Selenski’s Kingston Township home. Russin pleaded guilty to being an accomplice to third-degree murder in that case and was sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison.
Now, with Selenski facing another set of murder charges in the deaths of Kerkowski and Fassett, Russin testified as he vowed to do in his plea agreement, telling jurors how he helped Selenski try to get money from Kerkowski’s parents after the couple disappeared in May 2002.
Russin told jurors that he didn’t know Kerkowski, but Selenski, 41, had discussed the man’s disappearance, claiming the pharmacist was still alive. At the time, Kerkowski was awaiting sentencing and likely prison time for illegally selling prescription painkillers, a business prosecutors said earned him more than $800,000.
“(Selenski) never told me where he was,” Russin testified. “He told me he helped him get out of the country.”
Selenski claimed to be under “intense investigation” by the police for helping Kerkowski flee and asked for Russin’s help getting the money, he said. Eventually, Selenski sent Russin to Kerkowski’s parents’ Dallas house — a location Selenski had frequently driven past — with instructions for him to pick up a $40,000 “package,” Russin testified.
With Selenski listening in on a cellphone, Russin went to the door under the impression the meeting was pre-arranged and there would be no problems, he said. But Kerkowski’s father, Michael S. Kerkowski, refused to hand over any cash, saying he wanted to talk to his son, who he believed was dead, Russin said.
By that point, prosecutors said, the Kerkowskis had already given Selenski $60,000 their son had hidden in their basement. Selenski knew how much was hidden and where, according to previous testimony read from Michael S. Kerkowski, who has since died.
Prosecutors alleged Selenski and his accomplice, Paul Weakley, 45, tortured and murdered Kerkowski and Fassett to get at Kerkowski’s drug money.
Russin told jurors that on another occasion, Selenski again enlisted his help to get money from the Kerkowskis. This time Selenski brought a gun, he said.
“He was doing it to scare the bejesus out of him,” Russin testified.
Selenski went around to the back of their house and Russin went to the front, he said. But Michael S. Kerkowski refused to talk to him, instead sliding out a note containing five questions for Selenski to answer.
Kerkowski’s mother, Geraldine Kerkowski, previously testified they were questions only her son could answer, including his grandfather’s name and who he first took to the prom. She never got an answer, she told jurors.
Russin testified Tuesday that Selenski was evasive about getting those answers and later “flip-flopped a lot” about what occurred to Kerkowski, including whether he was dead or alive.
The bodies of Kerkowski and Fassett were found in June 2003 buried in Selenski’s backyard in an area Russin testified Selenski would frequently tell people to stay away from, citing fresh dirt in the location.
Both had been strangled with flex ties, Dr. Michael Baden, a world-renowned forensic pathologist and the former chief medical examiner for New York City, told the jury Tuesday afternoon.
Baden, who has worked on the HBO series “Autopsy” and is a fictional thriller author, told jurors he was called in to the case because local officials apparently felt the case merited more attention.
As prosecutors showed slides of the recovered bodies, Baden explained that “decomposition changes and soil discoloration” were responsible for the bodies appearing brown and shriveled at the time of the autopsy on June 8, 2003, more than a year after the time of death, which he calculated was in early May 2002.
“It does not quite look like a body,” Baden said as he described Fassett’s remains.
Both bodies had flex ties around their necks and wrists, and Fassett also had a tie around her ankles, he said. Kerkowski’s hands were bound with flex tape on top of the flex tie, and his eyes appeared to have been covered by duct tape that had since fallen to below his nose because of decomposition, he said.
Kerkowski and Fassett both had a broken hyoid bone in the neck, the result of being crushed by the flex ties, Baden testified. Kerkowski had a second fracture of some cartilage in his neck, Baden said, confirming Weakley’s account that Kerkowski had been choked with a flex tie before he was finally strangled.
“There’s enough distance between them that one flex cuff couldn’t do both,” Baden said during questioning by Assistant District Attorney Jarrett Ferentino.
Fassett also had a bruise on her right ear caused by a “narrow, hard object,” and Kerkowski had a small bruise on his right knee also from a blunt impact, Baden said. Kerkowski had an impact injury consistent with being hit by a rolling pin of the same sort Weakley claimed Kerkowski had been beaten with, Baden said.
“That could cause the injuries on Mr. Kerkowski’s head, as other objects could,” Baden said.
The prosecution is scheduled to continue making its case this morning.