Manuela Garcia

[Allen]

I recently watched a rerun of this show and looked it up online. The woman hit her husband 23 times in the head. This made me think of the theory I had pondered awhile back that Lizzie had chloroformed her parents to keep them from fighting back.


German native Manuela Garcia had fallen in love with an American serviceman and moved to Colorado. But 15 years into her marriage, the mother of three wanted to return home. Instead, in July of 1996, Manuela landed in a Colorado police station, after hacking her husband to death with an axe. She told officers her husband had forced himself on her and she had grabbed the axe to protect herself. Investigators found flaws in Manuela's story, most notably evidence that her husband had been drugged and unable to fend off the deadly axe attack. Prosecutors say she planned the attack in an attempt to free herself from her husband and return to Germany. Defense attorneys, however, described her as a battered woman, driven to kill after more than a decade of abuse. The jury found Manuela guilty of second-degree murder, but the conviction was overturned on appeal. Facing a second trial, Manuela pled guilty and was sentenced to 16 years in prison.

http://www.tv.com/snapped/manuela-garci ... recap.html


Wife drugs husband then beats him to death with an axe
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Manuela S. Garcia, age 32 and a German citizen, was originally found guilty in 1997 of lacing her husband's beer with a sleep medication and then hitting him 23 times in the head with an axe in their Edgewater apartment. She was then sentenced to 28 years in prison.

Garcia contends she killed her 36-year-old husband, Henry A. Garcia, after years of abuse, including rape. However, prosecutors expressed skepticism about her "battered woman syndrome" defense, noting that all the head wounds were in the same area and there was no indication her husband was struggling while she beat him to death. There is also evidence that Manuela had obtained the axe several weeks before the murder. She had also apparently told her 9-year-old daughter that she planned to kill her husband and take the children to Germany.

However, her 1997 conviction was thrown out by the Colorado Supreme Court in June, 2001, on the grounds that the trial court failed to tell the jury that Manuela had no duty to retreat from her alleged assailant and had failed to note she could justifiably use deadly force to prevent a sexual assault.

To the credit of Jefferson County District Attorney Dave Thomas, whose sister was killed in an act of domestic violence by her husband, and despite feminist propaganda to set her free, e.g., see Diane Carman's column on p. 1B of the April 4, 2002, Denver Post, Manuela Garcia was to be retried on the same charge.

According to the April 4, 2002, Denver Post (p. 2B) rather than face a new trial, Ms. Garcia chose instead to plead guilty to second-degree murder. She now faces 16 to 22 years in prison and sentencing is scheduled for May 30, 2002.

http://www.dvmen.org/dv-160.htm#axe

[Harry]

Josiah Hunt, the Keeper at the New Bedford jail also thought that the Borden's had been drugged prior to the murders. I agree, that if they were drugged, a drug such as chloroform would have had to have been used.

It's hard to see how that would have been done though. Andrew was home only about 15 minutes when his murder occurred. There's nothing to indicate that he drank or ate anything during this period. If he had dozed off it would have made it easy to approach him but I think he would have been awakened and resisted.

Abbie had been active dusting and making the bed. It would have required stealth and strength to subdue her.

I don't know how fast acting chloroform is in putting people in a helpless state. The murderer would have to subdue each of them for at least that length of time.

Wow, 23 blows with a hatchet. That's the same number as the Manchester murder. There was 19 for Abbie and 10 for Andrew. I'm beginning to believe hatchets make poor murder weapons. Or is it the use of that particular weapon that causes such brutality. Once you get started you have a hard time stopping?

[Kat]

That's a good question. I think it might be more efficient to beat someone over the head with a hatchet before the blade itself would ever kill. I think the combination of blows that broke Abbie's skull is what killed her.
There are instances of people surviving hatchet attacks with the bladed end.