Buried Secrets Homicide Trial — WI v. Kevin Lychwick — Full Closings

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: We will now hear the closing arguments of the parties. Because the state bears the burden of proof in this case, the state is allowed to go first and also make a rebuttal closing if they so choose. Attorney Thompson, you may proceed. [00:00:14] Thompson: Thank you, Judge. Okay, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for your patience over these last few days. There's been a lot presented to you, and you are here to perform your civic duty, and we very much appreciate it. We're here this week because of Carlos Maldonado, and we're here to find out and prove to you who killed him. And now, at the close of our case, the state has proven to you that Mr. Maldonado was killed by Mr. Leishwick, the defendant. As you heard from the court, the two elements of first-degree intentional homicide are that the defendant caused the death of Mr. Maldonado, and he acted with intent to kill him. We also have an intent element in the second charge of hiding a corpse. So instead of repeating the evidence for both charges, my intent here with closings is to argue how all of these pieces fit together for both charges. First, when we consider intent, as the court said, you can't look into a person's mind, and that's fine. So what do we have here in front of us? Operation Slop Shop. We have dates on exhibit number 146, and it says targets identified. It goes back to November of 2023, and interestingly enough, when we look at those autofill sections on Mr. Leishwick's cell phone, that's when you start seeing Mr. Maldonado's name. And those autofills don't just happen. That is the user who has to manually input those names, and then the phone remembers it. Then we have him on exhibit 156, I'm sorry, 146, as the target of the first operation. And the numbering of all four of these operations is very important because when you look at exhibit 147, which is Operation Starling, it says at the bottom, the operation can commence since Operation Slop Shop is completed. Funds and reparations have been seized from Slop Shop, so four Starling, and all threats from the first operation have been neutralized. That first operation is Carlos. Now, how do we know that this note was written by Mr. Leishwick? When we look at all of the pieces surrounding this note, and even some of the context and additional items in there, we know that it belongs to Mr. Leishwick. So, number one, it's found in his apartment. That's a really good place to start. He lives alone. He references his brother and his mother. He is next-door neighbors with Mr. Maldonado. And think about all those German references. Absolutely fine to enjoy German history, to want to go visit it. That in and of itself is not criminal. But the whole point of playing those clips and showing you those conversations is to provide context and show that these notes belong to Mr. Leishwick, and they were written by him. There's another name in Exhibit 146 that we have referenced several times of Raven. The sole reason that the state provided the information and the phone searches and the Google returns about Raven is to connect Mr. Leishwick again to these notes. That is the sole reason when we look at intent to kill and intent to conceal a body, we're also looking at the medical evidence here. And we heard Dr. Scheel talk all about how they processed this scene, how they brought Mr. Maldonado back, and why they did those x-rays. And her words were very specific. When we have a concealed body, we need to be careful on how we process and examine. And when they do those first set of x-rays, that's when we see the two projectiles, which we'll talk about in a little bit. But Dr. Scheel determined that the cause and manner of death was homicidal violence by the two gunshot wounds, and his manner of death was homicide. We may not know how far away Mr. Leishwick was standing from Mr. Maldonado when he shot him. We may not know which gunshot wound came first. But what we do know is that is the epitome of intent to kill. And when we consider the trajectory that Dr. Scheel and Dr. Truesdale talked about when they used that probe, both trajectories of those gunshot wounds were in the right, up, and out the left. Almost as if they came in quick succession to have such a close trajectory to each other. Regardless, though, that's two times. We also have evidence that these gunshot wounds are front to back. So Mr. Leishwick is standing right in front of Mr. Maldonado. And let's not forget about the fact that Mr. Maldonado was shot in the face. That is deeply personal. That is intent. That is, I am removing this human being from this earth. That is the target. And that is a surefire way to kill someone by shooting them right in the face. We also heard from Dr. Truesdale about how there were other fracture lines on Mr. Maldonado's skull. And she talked about how that comes from the energy of the bullet. And all that energy needs somewhere to go. When we talk about, then, how all the threats are neutralized, if that's not intent, I don't know what is. We also, then, consider the phone searches from Mr. Leishwick's cell phone that we recovered during the search warrant on November 26. What's interesting here, and what kind of overlaps with the trail camera videos, is that search on April 21st of 2024, seven days after Mr. Maldonado was murdered, and about 10 days before we see him on that trail cam, he's searching for carcass removal, disposal, how to dispose of spoiled food safely. Sure, it could be innocuous, I guess. But not when you consider everything in the totality. That timing is just too specific. The nature of those searches, the carcass, he's referring to Mr. Maldonado. That's what this evidence shows. Because at that point, he has Mr. Maldonado up on top of that hill in the area in which Moxie gave her trained final response. But this is an apartment complex. This is land that's shared by everybody. And eventually, he'll probably be discovered. And so now, a week later, we have this search of how to get rid of a carcass. And remember, that DNR article had three options. You can either take it to a landfill, you can take it back to where the harvest originally occurred, or you can bury it. Mr. Leishwik goes a little bit out of order, but it does make sense when you think about the timeline that we've presented to you. So first, we have him on those trail cameras then, 10 days later, with all of his gear. He's got his shovel. He's got his boots. He's got the plastic sheeting. He's got that black packaging with him that looks very, very similar to all of these black garbage bags. And he is up there for 30 minutes where we don't see him anymore, from 1241 a.m. to 110 a.m. And when we see the direction that he's walking, it's exactly the direction up that hill. Because then when you go off camera, you continue going up the hill, or you can divert to that footpath where we eventually found Mr. Maldonado. And there was a lot of talk about something on Mr. Leishwik's hip in that video. Detective Stern said, I can't tell for sure what that is. And Mr. Leishwik posited that it is a flashlight. Let's go with that. Let's say it is a flashlight. It makes sense in a way, because as you're up there, on the top of that clearing, knowing, okay, the DNR suggests that I need to bury a carcass, so I'm going to try digging, and I'm going to bring my shovel out there. There's no lights up there. So of course you need a flashlight to see where you're digging. But then he realizes, this isn't going to work. And as Detective Stern talked about, sorry, the dirt up there, you can get down a little bit, but then eventually you're hitting clay. You're hitting something harder. And that shovel that we have is not something that's going to be able to break through that. He can't bury Carlos deep enough to avoid detection. So then what does he do? Landfill. That's what we're going to do with this. So he starts dragging him down, because it's a lot easier to go down that hill than it is to go up that hill. So between that and Moxie hitting up there, that's where this all started. So then as he decides, I need to get rid of Mr. Maldonado, I need to get him off of this property, He has him in these opaque black garbage bags, which we saw from the Google Returns. He's got the tarp as well, which helps him drag or slide Mr. Maldonado down the hill to this footpath. The ropes, when you look at those ropes that were tied to the chair in Mr. Leishwick's apartment, and you put them side by side with those ropes recovered from Mr. Maldonado at autopsy, look at those patterns. Look and make that comparison, because those are the same kinds of ropes, because he used what he had. And so even those knots, if you look at how those knots are on each of those four ropes, they look pretty close. To those photos of the ropes from his apartment. And when we talk about intent to conceal, he's even threading those ropes through the grommets on the tarp. We have tape on Mr. Maldonado's hands. We have that black duct tape that is used to enclose Mr. Maldonado to tie together or tape together those black plastic garbage bags. And then once he is in this footpath, and we saw a picture of Carlos, he's not a small guy. And so if it's too difficult to get him into a car to bring him to a landfill, I can't drag him back up the hill now, so he's going to have to stay here. And so then we start piling on all of those branches, all that debris, and he goes undetected. Family knows that Carlos isn't here, that he's missing, but nobody sees him anymore. After Home Depot, on April 14th, we see from his phone records he comes back to 1512 East North, and then nothing. There's no movement. Nobody sees him again. That, combined with what he's wearing on that Home Depot video, and that's what he's wearing when we find his remains, this all goes to establishing April 14th. And even going back to those trail camps, yes, we have that half-hour break, but we never see Mr. Leishwick come back with any of his tools or his gear until 4.39 a.m. that morning. He goes back and forth. We see him go to the garage. We see him walking back up in that direction. So that's four hours where he's out there, and he's not exercising. That just doesn't make any sense compared to what we saw him bringing out there. So then, we talked a lot about the search of Mr. Leishwick's vehicle. And before we get to that point, he goes to U-Haul. And that is out of the ordinary for what the detectives have been seeing in terms of his pattern of travel over the last few days. So as he starts traveling north, we follow him to a storage facility. A storage facility that he has no history of searching for until within 48 hours of us finding Mr. Maldonado. He had rented it according to that receipt on November 1st, gets that free month promotion, and now he's got to empty everything out because that month is, maybe he's moving it. Maybe he's going to another storage unit. I don't know. But what we know is he emptied it. And then we follow him. And we saw him on the surveillance emptying it. So we follow him back to Waukesha. Officers stop the car. They seize the car. There's nobody else in the car with him. And what do we find after we get a warrant to search his car? The murder weapon. Inside that trunk, we find the shovel. In the back passenger seat, we have boots. We have numerous boxes of 9mm ammunition. So for Mr. Leishwick to say, I've never seen that gun before. I don't know what it is. I don't know how it got there. You certainly have a lot of ammunition for a 9mm. So then we also find all these garbage bags. We start putting all of these pieces together here. What's important to know, and really I'll sum up Ms. Crawford's testimony. She told us all about firearms identification and how we have those striations and those grooves and the manufacturing characteristics versus the individual characteristics. But here's the bottom line. These two projectiles recovered from Mr. Maldonado's body were fired from this gun. Period. End of story. So now you have an individual who is targeting the victim. He has his name written in notes. He is up in a trail area at the top of the hill. He is hiding evidence related to a homicide. And you heard on that recording, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they were tearing up everyone's apartments and I had to get my war bags out of there. Your war bags with the murder weapon? Thank you very much. So now we have this and Ms. Crawford says, yep, this is the murder weapon. Now we go and arrest Mr. Leischweck. We get his buckle swab, which you've heard a lot about. And this is another reason why this whole theory of I've never seen this gun before, I don't know anything about it. His DNA is all over that gun. When we heard from Ms. Taylor, we talked about the swabs from the grip of the Luger. And it's, in the state's view, important because this is a single source profile. There is no mixture. There is nobody else's DNA from the swab of the grip of this Luger. And it's Mr. Leischweck. And you heard Ms. Taylor talk about how in order to find another profile, or it would take us testing a quadrillion people to see a similar profile. There are not a quadrillion number of people in the world. So there's no question that Mr. Leischweck's DNA is on the grip of this Luger. Then we also look at the towels and the rubber bands. The exterior towel is a mixture, but we have very strong support for inclusion, which is the highest reporting level that our state crime lab has. We also see that quadrillion number again. And then we get to the interior towel, which is back to a single source profile. And it's Mr. Leischweck's. So ladies and gentlemen, sometimes, and you heard Mr. Leischweck talking about it, objecting to it, sometimes little things, they might seem, well, everyone has bleach. Everyone shops for hand soap. Everyone shops for garbage bags. True. I don't dispute that at all. But you can't take everything and just look at it individually in a vacuum. Your role here is to search for the truth, not to search for doubt. And the truth is, is that on April 14th of 2024, Mr. Leischweck murdered Mr. Maldonado. And all of the evidence is right here in front of you. And so I'm asking you when you go back there to deliberate that you hold Mr. Leischweck accountable and you find him guilty on both counts. Thank you. [00:21:17] Speaker 1: Thank you, Attorney Thompson. Mr. Leischweck, you may give your closing argument. You may stand at consult table if you would like, and you can also use the lapel microphone if you want. [00:21:28] Speaker 3: I think this microphone will suffice, Your Honor. Go ahead, then. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, thank you for coming and giving your precious time and effort to this case. I ask you now to do what you must do to acquit me of these horrible charges. I am totally innocent of this crime. I did not know this man well enough to hurt him. He did not know me well enough. To have attempted to hurt me in any way. We were neighbors. We did not know each other. The defense argues that I went on top of the hill. They take broad liberties with the truth and with their idea of facts in this case. But the fact is, they have no proof that I was ever even on top of that hill. I have established that I have a right to be out in my own yard and do whatever I do. They have no proof that I even spent all the time they're saying I did on the night in question when they're insinuating that I had something to do with the handling of poor Mr. Maldonado. They don't know that I went home and that I was on a hike looking around for possums that lived in my yard and feeding my rabbits because I couldn't sleep that night. That I normally would put my tools down and go for a run up and down the hill or the quick trip to buy groceries at all hours of the day. During the daylight hours I use a jogging suit. At night if I'm out [00:23:00] Thompson: I'm going to object at this point. This is all testimony and none of these facts are in evidence. [00:23:05] Speaker 1: That's sustained. Mr. Leishwick, I caution you. You can argue inferences and argue what the state doesn't show in their evidence but you can't testify about matters that have not been testified about. So just be careful that you're not trying to introduce new evidence or testify in any way. You can continue. [00:23:27] Speaker 3: Ladies and gentlemen, the jury, as you were instructed to do so, I implore you if you have any doubts in this matter to find me not guilty. There are plenty of doubts in this case and what the prosecution has established as their case against me. The accusers of the Waukesha Police Department headed by the investigative team of Detectives Benjamin Stern here, I implore you to weigh in consideration of my innocence in this matter and to take into consideration the manner in which they executed their search warrant against me. The search warrant being established originally because one of their detectives asked me, I think this has been established as evidence already, asked me about the presence of plastic bags in front of my car in which I truthfully answered the detective telling the detective that I moved my shovel and everything into my car for winter. I'm going to object. [00:24:32] Thompson: None of this is an evidence. [00:24:34] Speaker 3: It has to be. [00:24:35] Speaker 1: It's sustained. It's sustained. It's not in the trial record. The jury has not heard any evidence of this and the legality of the search warrants and the manner of their execution is not an issue for the jury to determine. You can continue, Mr. Leitchwick. [00:24:49] Speaker 3: If I may, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I have been unable to present a hearty defense in this matter because I have been imprisoned in the Waukesha County Jail for 18 months now and isolated from my funds and my family and my friends and my ability to hire an attorney. [00:25:11] Speaker 1: Okay, Mr. Leitchwick, stop, please. Again, these are not matters for the jury to consider. They are to consider only the facts and evidence that was presented in the case, not what could have been, not what wasn't. Only the facts and evidence that have been presented. Your status during the pendency of this case is not relevant and should not be matters for the jury to know. You introduced it, but it should not be for them to know. So focus on the issues here and the evidence that has been received in the trial this week and you can continue your arguments. Your Honor, you noted [00:25:44] Speaker 3: these protests throughout the trial that I have. I have. [00:25:48] Speaker 1: Now continue. [00:25:51] Speaker 3: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I implore you again, if you have any doubts as to my guilt, please find me innocent. I have a life out there. I am a good man. I am a God-fearing Christian. I just want to go home. I want to resume my life. I want to resume my life. And when I go home, the Waukesha Police Department and anyone assisting them will be able to continue searching for the actual killer or killers of the poor victim in this matter. As long as I am in custody, they have stopped looking for who actually killed this man. Imagine that. Whoever did this is still on the street. I implore you to please send me home. Find me not guilty in this matter because I am not guilty in this matter. And owing to the corruptibility of people and human nature, I am telling you there is a corrupt element within our local Waukesha Police Department. And if you find me innocent, perhaps there will be some house cleaning and they can take care of it. Somebody will investigate this matter and we will all be a little safer. I thank you for your time in coming here again. And again, my final statement to you is if you have any doubts in this matter, if you have any doubts about my guilt, please find me not guilty. [00:27:18] Speaker 1: Thank you, Mr. Leiter. Any rebuttal closing, Attorney Thompson? [00:27:24] Thompson: Very briefly. [00:27:25] Speaker 1: Go ahead. [00:27:35] Thompson: What I'd like to posit to the jury is there's probably someone else who really wants to go home or wanted to go back to his apartment that night. [00:27:48] Speaker 3: I object, Your Honor. She's already had her chance to make her statement in this matter. [00:27:52] Speaker 1: The objection is overruled because the state bears the burden of proof in this case. It is allowed by law to give a closing argument and provide a rebuttal closing. So the state gets the last word. Attorney Thompson, you may continue. [00:28:07] Thompson: Thank you. Mr. Maldonado had plans with his daughter and she never anticipated that he wasn't coming back to his apartment that night. And so who's responsible for that? Mr. Leishwick. So let's all remember why we are here because Mr. Leishwick murdered Mr. Maldonado and that's what this evidence shows. And the law that the judge read you is not, if you have any doubt you're not searching for doubt you search for the truth and the standard is not beyond all doubt it is beyond [00:28:52] Speaker 3: objection your honor what she's trying to instruct the jury to find me guilty. [00:28:57] Speaker 1: I disagree Mr. Leishwick the state is reciting elements of the reasonable doubt instruction that's permissible and ultimately ladies and gentlemen you are bound to follow the law and the instructions I give you not the law and the instructions the attorneys may interpret or recite. Ultimately what's in the jury instructions is what you follow. Attorney Thompson you may continue. [00:29:21] Thompson: Thank you. As I said it's not any doubt it's not even beyond all doubt it is beyond a reasonable doubt. When you look at all of these pieces together just like Dr. Truesdale said the bones tell a story. they tell a story about someone's life and all of these pieces of evidence here tell us the story of how Mr. Leishwick murdered Mr. Maldonado and then hid his body so that nobody would find him and hopefully he would get away with what he did. So I'm asking you to find him guilty on both counts. Thank you. [00:30:02] Speaker 1: Thank you.