May 18, 2009 10:32 pm US/Eastern
Accused Murderer Takes Stand In Own Defense
Jury Watches Video-Taped Confession
Fmr. Office Manager Accused Of Having Boss Killed To Conceal Embezzlement
MIAMI-DADE (CBS4) ―
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Trial is underway for Maria Catabay who is accused of masterminding the murders of Dr. Paul Jarrett and his son in 2003.
CBS
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Dr. Paul Jarrett, M.D. and Gregg Jarrett R.N. at the 1984 Olympic Summer Games held in Los Angeles, California.
Aleta Jarrett/CBS
In a rarely employed and risky gambit, an accused double murderess took the stand Monday and testified in her own defense against charges she masterminded the murders of her former employer and his son to conceal her embezzlement of her employer's money. It is apparently the best hope the defense believes she has to beat a murder conviction and life in prison without parole.
On Monday jurors watched and listened as Maria Catabay admitted to helping plan a burglary that ended with the murder of her boss and his son in 2003. In a video-taped confession played in the courtroom, Catabay told a homicide investigator that she knew her boyfriend and another man were going to burglarize the home of Dr. Paul Jarrett, a Coral Gables psychiatrist, in an effort to retrieve a letter she had written the doctor which apologized for having stolen from him.
Nowhere in the video-taped interview, however, does Catabay indicate that she knew the burglary would - or might - end in double murder.
It may not matter. Under Florida law, a person who participates in a crime in which someone dies can be convicted of "felony murder," even if they had no part in the actual killing.
"Dr. Jarrett had always been a good boss to me; he had always been a friend," Catabay said on the stand. "There was trust between us."
In the February 2004 confession, Catabay acknowledged that she directed her boyfriend, Juan Carlos Fernandez and a crony of his, Jose Barco, to the doctor's home. She had written Jarrett a letter, expressing regret that she had stolen from him in her job as office manager at his practice at Mercy Hospital. She feared the letter might be used later to prosecute her for embezzlement. The plan was to recover the letter, she said.
"I couldn't cover up what had happened; I knew something was wrong," she said.
Why, the detective asked in the 2004 interview, did Catabay not call the police after learning the doctor and his son, Greg Jarrett, had been murdered, shot dead as they slept in their beds? Catabay said she feared retribution from Barco, the alleged triggerman in the murders, who used execution style shots to the head to kill the two vicitms. "I was afraid that man would kill or hurt my children or myself," she said.
As far as her videotaped confession she said she was coerced to confess something she didn't do, citing an incident that happened when she was a teenager: "I was brutally raped by a person whom I believed was a police officer".
Catabay's claim of ignorance of the murder plot was contradicted earlier in the trial by a jailhouse snitch. Lisandra Cordova, Catabay's former cellmate, testified last week that Catabay admitted to her that Juan Carlos Fernandez had said he might kill the doctor, because Fernandez had been to his home on a prior occasion and the doctor might recognize him and be able to testify against him. The defense has attacked the credibility of Cordova, a heroin addict with a long history of arrests.
To avoid a murder conviction the defense will have to convince jurors that Catabay's confession to police was coerced.
Cross examination of Catabay is expected to start Tuesday afternoon.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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