SCOTT COUNTY : Lawyer: Spouse’s slaying justified
Posted on Wednesday, May 28, 2008
WALDRON — Patricia McClanahan was justified in killing her abusive husband whose torso was discovered more than four years later in a Scott County catfish pond, her attorney told jurors Tuesday in the opening of her first-degree murder trial.
Attorney John Irwin also told the Scott County Circuit Court jury of nine women and three men that Arkansas State Police detectives investigating the death misled McClanahan into believing they thought the case was one of spousal abuse, not murder, and that they never checked out her story about how the death occurred.
McClanahan, 64, of Mena is charged with first-degree murder and abuse of a corpse in the death of Joe Campiglia, 60, on Jan. 5, 2003.
Irwin said Campiglia physically and sexually abused McClanahan.
In court Tuesday, Mc-Clanahan wore a black pant suit with black high heels. Her graying hair was pulled back into a tight bun, a few streaks of the copper red hair she wore at the time of her arrest still showing.
She sat quietly at the defense table between her two court appointed attorneys, Irwin and Mike Allison.
At the end of court, an officer escorted McClanahan without handcuffs to a patrol car for her trip back to the Yell County jail in Dardanelle where she has been held in lieu of $ 1 million bond since her arrest in May 2007. She is being held in Yell County because Scott County has no jail facility for women.
She is accused of shooting Campiglia with a shotgun during an argument, then cutting off his arms, legs and head and tossing them and his torso into a catfish pond owned by Laota Noukay at 5245 Ross Creek Road southwest of Waldron.
Deputy prosecutor John Riedel told jurors Campiglia had been gone for months and showed up at the couple’s mobile home to pick up a Social Security check. The couple got into an argument that turned physical.
Irwin told jurors that Campiglia got a shotgun to beat Mc-Clanahan. He knocked McClanahan to the floor where she grabbed the butt end of the gun. While the two struggled with the gun, Campiglia stumbled and the gun went off, the blast striking him in the neck.
Investigators never checked McClanahan’s story by examining the mobile home or the car used to transport the body, Irwin said. Both had been sold since Campiglia’s disappearance.
Riedel said that instead of reporting Campiglia’s death to police, she dragged his body on a tarp to a well house behind their home then went to a friend’s home for coffee.
Two weeks later, he said, she cut up the body, throwing the arms, legs and head into the pond before wrapping the torso in a tarp and tossing it into the pond, along with a knife used to dismember him.
On May 9, 2007, Noukay was fishing in the pond when he noticed a blue tarp in the water. After he discovered the torso, he called authorities who later pulled up a wire basket that had more tarp, a knife and part of a pelvic bone. No other parts of Campiglia’s body were recovered.
Riedel said DNA recovered from the torso was found to be consistent with that of Campiglia’s brother and his daughter but that no positive match was made to identify the corpse as Campiglia.
The medical examiner’s office could not determine how Campiglia died, Irwin said.
Testimony begins at 9 a.m. today. The trial, presided over by Circuit Judge Elizabeth Danielson, is expected to last about a week.
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online
