Husband Lured Estranged Wife Home to Kill Her, Shot Dog: Prosecution

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Ms. Shea, you may give your opening mail. [00:00:05] Speaker ?: May I please support Mr. Benson? [00:00:16] Speaker 1: Good morning. Welcome back. So for the next two to three days, I am going to prove to you that the defendant shot and killed his wife of 13 years, Rosa Kramer. It happened about 6 a.m. on July the 23rd, 2024, at the Marital Residence, 2641 Hillcrest Avenue in Pensacola. Now, the defendant is charged with first-degree premeditated murder, which means I have to prove to you that the defendant killed her. And then at the time that he killed her, he had it in his mind. He had made the decision before he did the act to kill her. That's premeditated murder. So over the course of the next three days, you are going to hear a lot of evidence in a lot of different forms that there is trouble in their marriage. You're going to see and hear evidence, lots of messages, text messages, Facebook messages between the two of them. You'll hear from Rosa's family members about, you know, that they knew they were aware that there were issues in the marriage. You'll hear from the defendant's co-worker. The defendant was a stocker at, overnight shift stocker at PetSmart. And he worked part-time. He told his manager there at the PetSmart two or three months before Rosa's death that, you know, they were having trouble and that he knew his wife was going to leave him. Now, the decedent in the case, Rosa, she was a phlebotomist. And she was distressed by the breakdown of her marriage. She was depressed. She'd either taken some leave from work or tried to take leave from work and lost her job. At the time she died, she wasn't working. There were money troubles in the marriage. There's a house in the marriage. There are bills in the marriage. There were all these things that were contributing to the marital stress. And the defendant was very upset about it. You'll hear that about a week or two before her death, Rosa moved out of the house. She moved in with her dad and had been staying there. And during the time of her absence before her death, from the time she left to the time she was killed, the marital stress just continued to build. And you'll see the messages between Rosa and Tim about that. Now, it all sort of comes to a head on July the 22nd. On July the 22nd, Rosa had sent the defendant an email where she apparently said she was done, that it was over. And you'll see some of the communications between them on the 22nd, mainly from him because she doesn't really respond a lot to the defendant. And he's trying to get her to answer him. He's trying to get her to come see him. He's desperate. And ultimately, he lures her to the house. In messages on the 22nd of July, he lures her to the house with the promise of returning certain items that had belonged to her deceased mother. And he tells her to come first thing, come first thing in the morning so that we don't have to see each other because he would still be at work. Remember, he worked overnights at the PetSmart. On July the 23rd, he was supposed to work from 3 a.m. to 8 a.m. And he did. He came to work at 3 a.m. on July the 23rd. And you'll see the PetSmart video where he gets to work. But then he left at 425 in the morning. And he traveled home. And when he got there, when he got back to the house, he didn't park in the driveway. He pulled his car into the back of the house. He moved his truck behind the house. And this is a house that doesn't have a garage. It's not a house where they typically parked in the backyard. He had to open the fence, drive the car back there, close the fence back. And he waited for her in the house. On the morning of the 23rd, she got up early. She told her dad she was going to go over to the house to pick up some stuff. She would be back. She was expected back to take him to the doctor's office. And she got to the house at 5.59 in the morning. Now, by 6.12 in the morning, you're going to see evidence that the defendant starts calling his sister, just blowing up her phone, kept calling her over and over again until he gets her to answer. And his sister lives in Milton. His sister's name is Dolores. At 6.47, there is a text message from the defendant to his sister that says, You made a promise. Don't go back on your word. And Dolores, his sister, responds to him, Tim, you told me you killed her. I cannot be an accessory to this. I have a fiancé and his daughter to think about. For the rest of the day, the defendant and his sister, Dolores, go back and forth with the text messages for about almost 12 hours, back and forth with the text messages, talking about all of this, discussing Rose's death and exploring options for how they're going to explain it or how he's going to explain it. At 7.40 in the morning, you'll see evidence that the defendant left the house and took Rose's car over to a park a short distance away, within walking distance of the house, drove it up to the ball field, parked it behind a dumpster where it couldn't be seen from the road, walked back to the house. And then he stays at the house, continuing to text his sister, exploring, and even he himself, discounting self-defense, saying that what she had done, whatever had happened in the house, wasn't enough to rise to self-defense. Ultimately, they text back and forth, and he decides that he's going to go to his sister's house in Milton and hide out there. And he does. He does go to Milton just before 6 p.m. So most of the evidence that you're going to hear today is about how, it's from the perspective of Rose's family and law enforcement, how they are, you know, trying to figure out where she is and reporting that to law enforcement, trying to piece together what happened. And so when she doesn't return to take her father to the doctor's office, he gets concerned. He calls his other daughter, Rosa's sister, Lisa. They start text messaging to each other, and Lisa tries to reach Rosa, tries calling, tries texting, can't get a hold of her, ultimately tries contacting her on Facebook, and there's an exchange between, allegedly, between Lisa and Rosa. But Lisa starts to suspect, and rightly so, that it's the defendant texting her instead of Rosa, saying, oh, I'm at the beach, I'm just clearing my head, I'm just getting a drink. And this goes on for a few hours also. So you hear that ultimately Lisa calls the police to report her sister missing, and that's when law enforcement comes in and the missing person investigation begins. So you'll hear how that progresses. You'll hear how the officer that responds to Lisa goes over to the house, and they're looking around, nobody's home, nobody's there, nobody answers. But he does discover the tire tracks in the grass behind the house and thinks that it could be a problem. So then the investigation still continues, and you'll hear about how they find her car at the park, how they ultimately end up making entry into the house and locating her remains in the back bedroom. They found her dog there, who had also been shot. The dog at the time was, the dog is still, you'll hear the dog is alive and well, but the dog had been shot also, was locked in the house. And ultimately, law enforcement does find the defendant at his sister's house in Milton. And Milton PD makes contact with him just after midnight on the morning of the 24th. And you'll hear from that officer, he'll come in and you'll be able to have the opportunity to hear the interaction through the dash cam of his vehicle, of his interaction with the defendant. And the defendant says that he hasn't seen or heard from Rosa in over a week, that Rosa had moved to her dad's house, that they were getting a divorce, that it was final, they weren't getting back together. You will see photographs of him after he's taken into custody and the clothes that he's wearing. He's got on a PetSmart t-shirt and he's got on jeans, and the jeans have obvious blood splatter all over them. You're going to see crime scene photographs today. You're going to hear from the vet that examined the dog. And you will also hear from the medical examiner. Hopefully we get that far today. But you will hear from the medical examiner regarding her autopsy. Rosa was shot four times, twice in the head, once in the side, once in her knee. On Wednesday, we're going to start examining the defendant's phone and the contents of his phone. Explore all the messages between the defendant and Rosa, between the defendant and his sister. The Facebook messages that he sent to Rosa's sister, pretending to be Rosa. You will hear about the forensic analysis of the blood on his clothing, matching Rosa's blood. You're also going to hear about the forensic analysis of the firearm that was located in the defendant's vehicle. And there are never any perfect cases or perfect investigations. You'll hear that there was a firearm located in the defendant's vehicle. But there had to be two search warrants on this car. It was not located the first time when they searched the car right at the beginning of July, or right around the time this happened in July. It was located in October, but it was there in his car, and it was tested. And the firearm is the one that fired the shots that killed Rosa. Lastly, you're going to hear about the geolocation analysis that's done on the defendant's cell phone records. It's going to see that he goes to PetSmart for work early in the morning on the 23rd. You'll see that he comes home early on the 23rd. You'll see that he goes to the ballpark at 7.30, 7.40 in the morning. You'll see that he goes to Milton. All of this over the next three days is going to leave you with a certainty beyond a reasonable doubt. First, that the defendant killed his wife, and second, that it was from a premeditated design. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Shea.