Prosecutor Alan Goodwin slammed his fist again and again on the wooden counter near the witness stand in an Anchorage courtroom Monday morning, each thud representing a slash of Jimmy Korkow's knives when he stabbed his wife Teresa in 2005.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
Halfway through, knives bent from hitting her ribs, Korkow went to the kitchen and got two more. Goodwin paused, and then began again.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
The jury heard sixty-two thuds in all before it was sent to ponder Korkow's fate. Three hours later, it found him guilty of first-degree murder.
There was no question Korkow, 37, killed his wife in their South Anchorage apartment, first hitting her with a bottle hard enough to make her brain bleed, then stabbing her all over her body. Afterward he drove toward Homer, leaving three children in the house with their dead mother, covered with bedding, knives still buried in her. He planned to commit suicide, he said, but lost his nerve. Instead, he turned himself in to Alaska State Troopers in Soldotna. An investigation found her blood on his clothes and his fingerprint on one of the knives.
The jury had to decide if he intended to kill Teresa or whether, in an intoxicated rage, he stabbed her without thought of the consequences. Goodwin argued there was no way a man could stab someone so many times without meaning to kill. That's first-degree murder, a possible sentence of 99 years.
But Korkow's lawyer Krista Maciolek said her client had alcohol, cocaine and marijuana in his system. He didn't realize what he was doing. He acted with indifference toward human life, but not with an intent to kill, she said. That would make it second-degree murder, which carries a lesser sentence.
Maciolek said there was no motive for deliberate murder. The couple was doing well. They had plans to buy a house in Mountain View and fix it up. The day she died, Teresa Korkow had applied for a loan. When he turned himself in, Jimmy Korkow appeared in shock, saying "everything's such a blur." Did he intend for the initial blow with the bottle to kill her? There was no way to know, she said. The stabbing was an act of extreme emotion.
Goodwin told the jury to use common sense. He projected grisly images of Teresa's body, riddled with wounds. Certainly while he was stabbing her 62 times, Korkow had time to understand what he was doing, he said. When he went to get a second set of knives, it was because he intended that his wife die.
Maciolek told jurors witnesses who saw her client afterward described him as dazed and defeated.
Goodwin suggested another adjective:
"How about guilty?"
The jury agreed.
Korkow is scheduled to be sentenced in March.
Find Julia O'Malley online at adn.com/contact/jomalley or call 257-4591.
By JULIA O'MALLEY
jomalley@adn.com