Cassidy Jensen | October 22, 2024 | The Baltimore Sun | Original Source
After a third trial, a Baltimore County jury found James A. Kulbicki guilty of first-degree murder in the death of Gina Nueslein more than three decades ago.
Jurors spent less than half an hour deliberating Tuesday before delivering the same verdict as the juries that heard the 31-year-old case in 1993 and 1995. They also found Kulbicki guilty of using a handgun in commission of a felony.
Prosecutors said Kulbicki, 68, a former Baltimore Police sergeant who began an affair with Nueslein beginning when she was 19 and got her pregnant, killed her on Jan. 9, 1993, to avoid paying child support for their son. A hearing in a paternity case was scheduled for Jan. 13, 1993.
Nueslein was 22 when she was found dead in Gunpowder Falls State Park. She left for her job at Royal Farms in the afternoon of Jan. 9 and never arrived at work. Barbara Clay testified last week that she saw a man in his 30s in a pickup truck pulling up to the park as she was leaving that afternoon, and later identified him as Kulbicki.
During his closing argument, Assistant State’s Attorney Michael Fuller displayed photos of Nueslein lying dead on the ground the next morning, wearing a pink coat over her store uniform. Her pants were pulled down — as if her body had been dragged there, Fuller said — and there was blood on her face.
“He executed a defenseless woman, the mother of his child,” Fuller said.
Kulbicki had a clear motive, he said: “His double life was about to be exposed.”
An autopsy showed Nueslein was shot in the back of the head, causing an “evulsion,” or a tearing so forceful that it pushed pieces of bone out of her body, Fuller said. Investigators found a bullet fragment in her head and “metallic fragments” in Kulbicki’s Ford pickup truck.
In the truck, which detectives said smelled like it had been cleaned, police also found skull fragments that matched Nueslein’s DNA — with an increasing degree of certainty as it was retested over the years.
A denim jacket police found in Kulbicki’s closet had Nueslein’s blood on the sleeve, Fuller said. A photo shown to the jury showed the sleeve peeking out in a closet, a large red stain visible on the left sleeve.
Natalie Finegar, Kulbicki’s attorney, argued Tuesday that the scientific evidence that made up the case was based on “faulty foundations” and assumptions.
Finegar suggested police bungled the chain of custody for certain evidence and that a Smithsonian expert had assumed that the fragments found in the truck were human bone without proving their makeup. Over the years, forensic investigators retested DNA samples as techniques advanced, but Finegar said the original samples could have been mixed together, or improperly interpreted.
“We’ve retested something from the initial premise that may or may not have been correct,” she said.
Finegar also said Kulbicki’s alibi witnesses had no incentive to lie decades later. She said Kulbicki’s wife already knew of his affair and he already had withdrawn $1,800 to give Nueslein at the upcoming child support hearing.
Finegar, Fuller and Deputy State’s Attorney John Cox declined to comment Tuesday on the verdict.
Kulbicki’s sentencing is set for Jan. 17. Prosecutors are asking for a sentence of life without parole, the same sentence he received after his previous convictions.
Kulbicki didn’t react visibly as the verdict was read, but Nueslein’s sisters began crying.
Some of the Baltimore County Sheriff’s deputies inside the courtroom Tuesday might have been familiar faces to Kulbicki. Many county sheriff’s deputies are retired Baltimore Police officers, and at least one had served with him.
Another retired city officer sat in the front row, close to the jury box: Gina Nueslein’s uncle, Victor Gearhart, who accompanied his niece to fill out paperwork for her child support suit in the 1990s, is a retired Baltimore Police lieutenant.
Kulbicki replaced Gearhart as sergeant on the midnight shift in the Northwest District in 1992, soon after being promoted. Gearhart described Tuesday’s verdict as “sheer relief.”
“I’ll never forget it. I’ll never forget what happened as long as I live,” Gearhart said in an interview.
Kulbicki’s arrest was shocking for the department, which was initially divided on his innocence, he said.
“There were some who believed him — it was his friends. Most didn’t. The [Fraternal Order of Police] voted not to give him any support, financial or legal,” Gearhart said.
“People said, how could a policeman have done something like that? He wasn’t a good policeman, in my opinion, he was a lazy policeman and that’s why evidence was found,” he said, detailing the ways Kulbicki had failed to cover up the crime scene or obscure his involvement.
This jury didn’t hear ballistics testimony heard in Kulbicki’s first two trials that relied on a since-discredited bullet analysis method, nor did they hear from a ballistics examiner who later admitted to lying about his education and then died by suicide. Those issues led a court to overturn the 1995 verdict.
However, jurors did hear from other witnesses who are now dead, with their testimony from previous hearings read aloud during the trial. One such witness was Geraldine Nueslein, Gina Nueslein’s mother.
Both Geraldine and her husband Joe “died without closure,” said Mary Peitersen, Gearhart’s wife.
Geraldine was a devout Catholic who couldn’t comprehend Kulbicki’s actions or denials, she said.
“Geraldine could not understand why Kulbicki would jeopardize his immortal soul,” Peitersen said. “Until she died, she was tormented.”
Comments