OGDEN -- Police have Robert McCullar on video describing a killing -- but a story told only to impress a woman, the defense told the jury Monday as McCullar's trial opened.
McCullar, 50, is charged with the Dec. 22, 2009, stabbing death of Filiberto Robles Bedolla, 49, at 2560 Adams Ave.
The trial promises to be a monthlong journey though Ogden's inner city, with neighborhoods filled with "drug dealers, drug users, prostitutes and good people I'm sure just can't afford to live anyplace else," McCullar's public defender, Jim Retallick, told the jury in his opening statement.
The trial is scheduled for 11 days, running through July 29, before 2nd District Judge W. Brent West. McCullar has been in Weber County Jail since his arrest in February 2010.
Weber County Attorney Dee Smith told the jury they would be hearing and seeing tapes police made with the help of one of McCullar's girlfriends, an admitted prostitute and drug abuser, that reveal McCullar's confession to stabbing Bedolla 14 times. Police released her from jail to entice McCullar to a hotel room where the tapes were made.
Smith said McCullar will be heard and seen telling the woman that he followed Bedolla into his apartment, catching the door before it closed, to attack the man. Bedolla had just called him a racial slur and spit upon him in a confrontation over a cigarette.
Smith said only one of the 14 stab wounds to Bedolla's head, face and chest was fatal, but that one essentially slit his throat.
McCullar described the Bedolla's gaping throat wound to the woman, even touching her throat in his descriptions, Smith said.
But Retallick said the woman would have done anything to get out of jail and had made numerous calls to friends asking for bail, with no luck. When she called McCullar, he was with another woman, he said.
The woman, Donna Major, then made a statement of anger at everyone who failed to help her, Retallick said: "Karma's coming to town and the bitch is named Donna."
"I represent the biggest idiot in the world," Retallick said of McCullar, who he claimed was bragging to Major about the murder to entice her to travel with him to meet his family in Dallas.
Retallick said that in Major's first statement to police, she claimed she was with McCullar when he murdered Bedolla. He promised his cross-examination would cover her more than 30 lies to police.
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