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Tuesday, May 30, 2000
Both sides to sum up in conspiracy trial
Prosecutors must convince jury that evidence convicts Gary Karr in atheist's disappearance
Associated Press
AUSTIN - Closing arguments in the trial of the only man charged in the disappearance of famous atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair will begin Tuesday with attorneys taking the same positions that started the trial two weeks and 75 witnesses ago.
Prosecutors must convince the jury that a vast web of mostly circumstantial evidence is enough to convict Gary Paul Karr, 52, with conspiring to kidnap and extort money from O'Hair, her son Jon Garth Murray and her granddaughter Robin Murray O'Hair.
"We do believe Mr. Karr is a very dangerous individual," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Gerald Carruth before the trial started.
Prison inmates testified during the trial that Karr told them he was involved in the slayings. Federal agents presented hundreds of telephone calls, car rentals, airplane trips and other financial transactions they said implicated Karr in the plot.
But Karr's attorneys will hammer home the fact that despite the testimony that the O'Hairs were killed and dismembered - and the bow saw and knives entered into evidence- prosecutors cannot produce the bodies - leaving open the argument the O'Hairs are still alive somewhere.
Tom Mills, Karr's attorney, said Thursday the prosecution did not prove otherwise. "The defense analysis is that the government's case is not factually tight and insufficient in some significant areas," he said.
Two people testified for the defense that they saw O'Hair alive during the time prosecutors say she was kidnapped or killed - once during the summer or fall of 1995 in a San Antonio bar, and once in a restaurant in Romania in November 1997.
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