Jurors at Erika Sifrit's murder trial listened yesterday to a tape of a 911 call that prosecutors said she had made from an Ocean City penthouse about the time that a Fairfax City couple were killed and dismembered there.
As the prosecution concluded its case yesterday, jurors also heard from Sifrit's father, who testified about his son-in-law's desire to give Erika Sifrit a gun, and from a Maryland State Police firearms expert, who said one of the victims had been killed with a .357-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver taken from Sifrit when she was arrested five days after the killings.
Sifrit, 25, has been on trial since Monday for the May 26, 2002, killings of Martha Margene Crutchley, 51, and her companion, Joshua E. Ford, 32. Prosecutors said Sifrit and her husband, Benjamin A. Sifrit, 25, lured the couple to a condominium and killed them with no apparent motive.
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At his trial in April, Benjamin Sifrit blamed his wife for the killings. He was found guilty of second-degree murder in Crutchley's death and acquitted of killing Ford. His trial was held in Montgomery County, and his wife's is being conducted in Frederick County, because of heavy publicity surrounding the killings on Maryland's Eastern Shore.
In a reversal of Benjamin Sifrit's strategy, Erika Sifrit's lawyers, Thomas R. Ceraso and Arcangelo M. Tuminelli, have argued that her husband, a former Navy SEAL, killed the couple and that she helped him hide the evidence.
The 911 call allegedly made by Erika Sifrit was received about 3 a.m. May 26 from the two-story penthouse in the Rainbow Condominium.
"Ah, there are people in the house who I don't know and my purse is suddenly missing, and I'm afraid I'm going to have a robbery here," the female caller said. "I'm upstairs in a bedroom, and they don't know where I am."
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The call was then transferred from the Worcester County communications center to Ocean City's 911 center.
"Ah, hi -- there are people in my apartment," the woman said. Clicks are heard on the line.
"Ma'am, did you want the police?" the dispatcher asked.
"Yes, I did but . . . I think there is a third person on the line right now," the woman said, before requesting a number to call back and then hanging up.
Prosecutors have argued that the 911 call puts Erika Sifrit with the victims about the time that the killings occurred. They also have asserted that the call was a ruse to create an alibi in the event that someone heard the gunshots. Benjamin Sifrit's attorneys argued at his trial that the call was proof that his wife alone killed them after a night of heavy drinking and drug use because she thought she was being robbed.
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For the past few days, Erika Sifrit's attorneys have challenged the alleged ties between her and the .357-magnum revolver linked by a ballistics expert to Ford's killing. They have also sought to cast doubt on the prosecution's assertion that a knife taken from her was used to cut up the bodies and that she was wearing a ring that belonged to Ford.
Under questioning Wednesday by Ceraso, for example, Detective 1st Class Clinton Chamberlain acknowledged that he was "not positively" certain from a photograph showing Erika Sifrit wearing a necklace with a cross and a large ring that the ring was Ford's.
Though Erika Sifrit's trial has followed the outlines of her husband's, there have been dramatic departures. For example, Nicholas Ortt, a bouncer at Seacrets nightclub in Ocean City, testified only briefly Wednesday, to identify pictures of the Sifrits.
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At Benjamin Sifrit's trial, however, Ortt testified that Erika Sifrit erupted in a fury one night in Seacrets when Ortt told her husband to leave the club. Ortt said then that Erika Sifrit cursed, whipped out a gun and threatened to kill him. But he could not say whether she had threatened him with a revolver, a 9mm or a .45-caliber handgun.
Apparently because of Ortt's confusion over the type of gun she allegedly threatened to use, prosecutors did not elicit testimony about the weapon at her trial.
Erika Sifrit, charged with two counts of murder, leaves the Frederick County jail with Lt. Steve Snow.
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