Jury finds woman guilty of killing husband
CRIME & THE COURTS /
BELLEFONTAINE — Rosalie Kennedy clutched her attorney’s hand, then gasped and dropped her head into her hands as the Logan County jury’s verdict was read finding her guilty of murder and felonious assault in the March death of her husband of 25 years.
Kennedy, 63, faces life in prison for the charges, each of which carries gun specifications. The jury deliberated more than four hours and asked numerous questions.
Evidence included a rambling 911 call in which she admits to shooting Gary Kennedy, 66, a retired utility line worker, during a March 10 dispute in the couple’s home in the 8100 block of Township Road 110 in Rushylvania.
Her attorney, Tina M. McFall, maintains that Kennedy didn’t pull the trigger.
“She just didn’t do it,” McFall said during a recess on the last day of testimony, noting that she never considered a plea agreement for her client.
In the 911 call, Kennedy tells the dispatcher that she thinks her husband was shot. Asked why, Kennedy responds, “Because he pulled out a gun and turned it on me, and I shot him.”
Logan County deputies testified that when they arrived at the home, they found Mrs. Kennedy in the kitchen and ordered her out. Inside, they found Mr. Kennedy dead on the floor.
Before being taken for questioning, Mrs. Kennedy was left in a deputy’s cruiser with a recording device. For more than an hour, she alternates between justifying what had happened and denying she was responsible.
“I didn’t kill Gary. I loved him. Please God please. I’ve not ever been in trouble,” she said on the recording as reported in the Bellefontaine Examiner newspaper.
At one point she speaks to her deceased husband: “I would not hurt you and you would not hurt me. Gary you need to tell it to the police.”
“There’s no element of intent to kill here,” McFall told Common Pleas Judge William T. Goslee.
In her hour-long closing arguments, McFall suggested the couple’s excessive drinking and arguing led to a struggle for the .28-caliber handgun.
“Rose can’t tell you what happened, because she doesn’t remember,” McFall told the jury.
Evidence showed three shots fired: One went through a window. Another glanced off Mr. Kennedy’s back. And a third went into his upper chest, rupturing his aorta.
Prosecutor Eric Stewart said that circumstantial evidence would determine Mrs. Kennedy’s intent, or mental state, but was not needed for a conviction.
“She stated that he had a gun, so she shot him,” Stewart said, noting that earlier she had sprayed Mr. Kennedy with a soft drink after finding pornography on his Kindle tablet.
McFall described an elaborate scuffle during which shots were fired, a scenario that Alice Robinson-Bond, an assistant prosecutor, called a “complicated, fictionalized account not based on fact.”
Bud Risner, Mrs. Kennedy’s older brother, said the couple appeared to get along.
“We liked Gary,” said Risner, 70, of North Carolina. “We’d go out to dinner.”
As for his sister shooting her husband: “It’s not in her character. She liked everybody.
“Rose doesn’t hurt anything. She loves animals. But people can be a lot more difficult.”