By ROXANA HEGEMAN ~ Associated Press
KINGMAN (AP) – Testimony in the trial of a former Kansas lawman has wrapped up with the defendant denying he shot and killed his wife and set their house on fire to hide evidence.
Closing arguments are scheduled Monday in the first-degree murder trial of Brett Seacat for the death of Vashti Seacat. The judge on Friday denied a routine defense motion for acquittal, leaving the verdict to the jury.
Seacat testified over two days and was the last witness jurors heard in 12 days of testimony.
The former instructor at the Kansas Law Enforcement Training Center showed jurors photos of burns and blisters on his feet and singed hair on his calves that he sustained during the April 2011 fire. He recounted how he scooped up his two young children and took them outside, then ran back in to try to pull out his wife’s body.
Earlier, he told jurors in his first-degree murder trial about the early morning phone call he got from his wife telling him he needed to get their boys or they might get hurt.
The 37-year-old testified he was sleeping on the couch in their home when his wife called him on the phone from an upstairs bedroom. He said he heard a loud crackling and then popping sound as he ran upstairs.
He testified he picked up her body off the bed and dropped it as he realized she was dead and the house was on fire.
His voice cracking at times, a former Kansas lawman told jurors Friday that it was his fault his wife is dead – but that he didn’t kill her.
Seacat is charged with first degree murder in the April 2011 shooting death of Vashti Seacat. Prosecutors say Seacat wrote a fake suicide note for his wife, then shot her and set their home on fire. Defense lawyers say Seacat’s 34-year-old wife set the house alight then shot herself.
Seacat, of Kingman, is also charged with aggravated arson and two counts of child endangerment. The Seacats’ two children were at home and asleep when the fire started. They were not hurt in the fire.
Seacat haltingly told jurors how he had threatened his wife that evening when he realized she intended to go through with a contested divorce. He testified that he told her he would expose her affairs with two managers at the cable company where she worked so she would be fired. He said he threatened to publish private photos of her.
On Thursday, defense attorneys called forensic consultant Gene Gietzen to testify about traces of gasoline that the prosecution contends were found on the pants Brett Seacat wore that day. Gietzen disputed the findings that the compounds found on the clothing proved it was gasoline and criticized the way the evidence was handled.