The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Woman’s murder trial begins
Vermilion resident accused of killing her husband
Julene Simko was still wearing a gold band on the ring finger of her left hand as she sat, flanked by her attorneys, in Lorain County Common Pleas Court on Sept. 12.
It was the first day of her murder trial in Common Pleas Court where Simko, 38, of Vermilion, is facing a single count of aggravated murder, and two counts of murder, two counts of felonious assault and a single count of tampering with evidence in connection to the 2009 shooting death of her husband, Jeremy Simko.
Shortly before jury selection was set to begin for the trial, Simko waved her right to have jurors decide her innocence or guilt.
Instead, Simko opted to have her case decided by Common Pleas Court Judge Mark A. Betleski.
During his opening statement, Lorain County Assistant Prosecutor Anthony Cillo said there was no intruder, and that Simko shot her husband with a .357 Magnum Smith & Wesson revolver the couple kept in a china cabinet in the first floor kitchen of their North Ridge Road home.
“She retrieved (the gun), went up the steps, got to a bedroom… she sidled down in the side closest to the door,” Cillo said. “(She) leaned down, put the barrel of this gun to the middle of the king-sized bed less than two inches to the back of his head and executed him.”
According to Cillo, the Simko’s were very serious about home security.
“Everybody knew (Jeremy Simko) always had a gun next to him,” Cillo said. “He had property that had four different doghouses that he would lock up and chain up at night that were stationed around the back of the property.
“The neighbors claim (the dogs) are hyper-vigilant. You make a sound and you’re 400 feet away, those dogs started barking.”
Cillo said the family also had alarms on the doors entering the home and on the driveway, as well as cameras pointing in different directions outside of the home.
“What doesn’t make sense is: Nobody that knows Jeremy Simko would have come to the house to do what happened that night,” he said highlighting the various security measures an intruder would have had to avoid. “The cold, hard, ugly facts of this case, your honor, are that a wife killed a husband.”
Defense attorney Jack Bradley, in his opening statement, instead pointed the finger at the Vermilion Police Department saying they’d made up their minds very early in the investigation that Simko had killed her husband and neglected to investigate other leads.
Specifically, Bradley highlighted a tip the Police Department had received about another neighbor who he said was known to threaten people in the neighborhood with guns and threats of murder.
“This guy is bad news,” he said. “(The police) did a little report, and for some reason, it just never was acted upon. They didn’t do anything.”
Bradley said this man would come to the Simko home to take care of their dogs and may have had a key to enter the house.
He said police also knew he was a drunk who was known to carry guns despite not being legally allowed.
“I’m not telling you this is the person who did it, or this is the person (who did) not do it,” Bradley said. “I’m just telling you that when you look in a crime scene with a microscope instead of a telescope, then you might miss something.”
After a break, the prosecution’s first witness was Vermilion police Detective Sgt. Stephen A. Davis.
Davis was the first officer to interview Simko while she sat wearing only panties covered in her husband’s blood in the bathroom of the home within the hour of personnel being called to the residence.
A recording of that interview was played in court.
Though the recording is rough, one could hear Davis attempt to ask Simko simple questions like what her name is and what day of the week it is.
She can be heard in the recording weeping and crying out hysterically and appearing unable to answer what her last name was or what her mother’s last name was.
The defense asked for the tape to be played in its entirety including a point at the end where the officer failed to stop the recording.
Within the last few minutes of the recording, someone, most likely an officer as they were the only ones on scene, could be heard saying, “she probably did it.”
As part of Davis’ testimony, the prosecution also played a recording of the original 911 call Simko made at 6:04 a.m. on the day of the murder.
In the recording, Simko wept and screamed openly as the dispatcher attempted to walk her through giving her husband CPR.
Davis said there were several things about the call that he found unusual.
“One of the things: the operator asked the defendant if Jeremy had shot himself and she said, ‘no,” Davis said. “I don’t know how she could have known whether he did or not.”
He also said, from the call, it did not sound like Simko actually was doing what the dispatcher was instructing her to do; specifically pulling her husband onto the floor from the bed.
It didn’t sound like she was giving him mouthto-mouth and it did not sound like she’d put the phone down or dropped it while attempting CPR, Davis said.
The trial is set to resume at 8:45 a.m., Sept. 13.