Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2004 | 9:03 a.m.
Jurors began deciding this morning whether Susanne Carno is a grieving widow or a calculating killer.
During closing arguments in her trial on Tuesday, prosecutors said Carno was not only a murderer, but also a master manipulator.
They say she tricked friends and family into believing she was mourning her husband, 36-year-old Richard Carno, when she had actually hired her brother, John Brian Ray, to kill him. Chief Deputy District Attorney David Schwartz quoted a famous line from William Shakespeare's play, "As You Like It."
"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players," Schwartz said.
He said Carno practiced her "role" as widow in the months leading up to the slaying while she took a psychology class at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Sally Still, a classmate of Carno's, testified that Carno told her that her husband had died from an ice skating injury at least two months before he actually died.
"The performance at UNLV was a dry run for the part she'd really play two months later," Schwartz said. "A widow, yes. And based upon the evidence, a killer."
The closing arguments, which lasted most of the day on Tuesday, wrapped up Carno and Ray's weeklong capital murder trial before District Judge Joseph Bonaventure. The siblings are eligible for the death penalty if convicted.
Schwartz's closing argument was followed by arguments from defense attorneys, who each pointed fingers at the other co-defendant, saying their clients played no role in the crime.
Carno's attorney, Deputy Special Public Defender Alzora Jackson, suggested that Ray and two of his friends kidnapped and killed Richard Carno during a methamphetamine binge. She maintained that Carno never plotted to kill her husband.
"There's no doubt that John Brian Ray killed Richard, but there's just no evidence that this lady did anything," she said, pointing to Carno.
Jackson said Carno loved her husband and was loved by her husband.
"You may find (Carno) odd, offensive. You may find her to be the biggest liar in town. But Richard Carno picked Susanne Carno," Jackson said.
Attorneys for Ray told jurors that while Carno may have tried to manipulate her brother into carrying out the crime, Ray did not follow through with it.
Ray's attorney, Deputy Public Defender Joseph Abood, said his client was a "drifter" and a "drug addict" who wasn't savvy enough to carry out a contract killing.
"John Ray is no killer. He's kind of a joke. He couldn't do it. He's a bumbling idiot," Abood said.
Abood said that if jurors believed the state's theory -- that Carno conjured up a scheme to kill her husband -- they had to question the involvement of an 18-year-old state witness named James Walsh.
Walsh, who described himself as a former friend of Ray's, admitted to smoking methamphetamine with Ray on the day Carno disappeared. Walsh's fingerprint was the only one found on the plastic bag around Ray Carno's neck when he was found.
"If you're going to look at anyone, you've got to look at James Walsh," Abood said. "Mr. Walsh is a serial liar. I would caution you not to believe a word he says."
Richard Carno was found dead in his green Ford Escort on Jan. 31, 2002, near a trailer park in northeast Las Vegas. An autopsy revealed that he had been strangled.
Prosecutors allege Carno cooked up the scheme in order to collect on a $500,000 life insurance policy. They say Carno manipulated her brother into carrying out the plan and promised to pay him $50,000.
During the trial, circumstantial evidence mounted against Ray. Several witnesses said Ray had discussed fulfilling a "contract" for his sister shortly before Richard Carno was found dead near the Comstock Trailer Park in January 2002.
Two residents of the trailer park testified that they saw a man running through the park with duct tape wrapped around his hands and feet on the same day that Richard Carno disappeared.
They said they saw a second man running after him and that the man eventually caught up to him and walked with him in the opposite direction. The witnesses said they didn't call police because they thought the men were only playing around.
Prosecutors told jurors that Carno's guilt is evident, in part, in a series of e-mails Carno sent to her brother in the weeks before the killing, in which she discusses "a job" that needed to get done. Abood said several of those e-mails were left unopened.
"I am going nuts waiting. If you're not going to do it just tell me and I'll do it myself or find someone who will," one e-mail said.
In another e-mail Carno refers to a bookshelf she says she wants her brother to finish building. Prosecutors believe the bookshelf was a code word for the murder.
Defense witness Shawn Olson, a friend and neighbor of the couple's, said the bookshelf actually existed. Olson said Richard Carno told him that his wife had asked Ray to build the shelf as a gift for Richard.
During her argument, Jackson told jurors that while the state had overwhelming evidence against Ray, prosecutors offered little proof that her client was the mastermind behind the killing. She acknowledged that Carno acted oddly in the months leading up to Richard Carno's death, but said that did not make her client guilty of murder.
"It's not normal behavior," she said. "I cannot explain that and I don't have to. Behaving oddly at UNLV, last time I checked, did not amount to first-degree murder."
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