Defense: Killing of roommate, hiding of body was not a murder

Yes, Charles Moninger killed his roommate in January 2004, his defense lawyer told a Broward jury Tuesday. And yes, he tried to cover it up, literally, by stuffing her body into a closet and building a wall to hide it.

But that doesn’t mean it was murder, Arthur Marchetta said, arguing that the killing of Julianne Beth Berger, 43, was an act of selfdefense from Moninger’s point of view.

Moninger was already tried and convicted for the crime in 2008. But a faulty jury instruction gave him the right to have his case brought to trial again.

“The state is focused on what happened after the fact,” Marchetta argued. The killing itself, he suggested, was sudden, committed in the heat of the moment, and justifiable under the law.

Moninger told police in late January 2004 that he killed Berger because she was in a rage when she woke him from sleep. Berger had last been seen alive near the beginning of the month, and worried family members went from concerned to frantic as days passed without word from her.

Moninger fed them false stories about her taking sudden, unannounced trips and leaving her cell phone behind. In reality, Berger was dead. Jurors heard testimony last week and Monday detailing how Moninger put a gag over the victim’s mouth, stuffed her into the closet, and constructed a wall so that anyone who came in would not be able to see her.

Marchetta conceded those allegations, but suggested they only proved his client’s poor judgment. The killing itself, he said, was not a murder.

Prosecutor Vegina Hawkins disagreed, using Moninger’s own statement to police to disprove his selfdefense argument.

“In response to her waking him out of his sleep, yelling and screaming,” she said, “in response to her yelling at him, when at some point she walks away, he follows her into her bedroom, her sanctuary, and he crushes her skull. Those are his words.”

Hawkins also questioned why Moninger would have to gag the victim when she was already dead, answering that it demonstrated his determination to make sure she could not call help, “just in case.”

“She would never be able to scream for help,” Hawkins said.

Moninger was arrested in late January 2004 in Daytona Beach after the body was discovered.

Police also found a note Moninger left behind for the victim in an apparent effort to make it seem he still expected her to return home.

“I wish you all the luck in the world,” he wrote. “I know you’ll need it.”

The note was signed, “Your ex-roommate.”

The jury will return to Broward Circuit Judge Ilona Holmes’ courtroom this morning. out for

rolmeda@SunSentinel.com, 954-356-4457, Twitter @SSCourts and @rolmeda