I wonder if he will be df'd....probably not.
Jarka case: Murrieta man expected to be sentenced Friday for murder of wife
Posted By jose.arballo On November 4, 2009 @ 2:22 pm In Courts, Crime, Local News, News | 1 Comment
Kelle Lee Jarka
A Murrieta man convicted of murdering his longtime wife and making the killing look like it was done by an intruder is scheduled to be sentenced Friday and faces a lifetime in prison with no chance of parole.
Kelle Lee Jarka, 41 at the time of his trial, was convicted by a jury that deliberated about two hours in September before deciding he murdered his wife, Isabelle, at the family’s home and that the killing was for financial gain.
Prosecutors successfully argued Jarka, who was having financial problems, wanted to collect $1.3 million in life insurance on a policy he had taken out on his wife of nearly 20 years.
During the trial, prosecutor Burke Strunsky described Jarka as a man so enamored with his upper-middle-class lifestyle and position within his congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses, that he was willing to sacrifice the life of his loving wife to maintain it.
Jarka was teetering on financial ruin and social disgrace at the time of Isabelle’s death, the prosecutor said. His Tamarisk Street home was being foreclosed on, bills were piling up, Isabelle was talking about divorcing him and she’d told another church elder that Jarka had erred by keeping secret about a friend dying of AIDS.
Defense attorney Erin Kirkpatrick told jurors Kelle Jarka was a peaceful man and a loving husband who did not kill his wife. Kirkpatrick said the Jarka’s finances were unstable, but their fiscal picture was not dire. Jarka had just taken his wife to see a home under construction in the hills of DeLuz and announced he wanted to buy it for their family.
Despite the best efforts of Murrieta police, she said, there was no physical evidence linking her client to Isabelle’s brutal death.
Isabelle Jarka suffered almost a dozen blows to her head with a blunt object resulting in a fracture to her skull and injuries to her brain, Dr. Joseph Cohen testified. The doctor could not establish a time of death nor could he say with certainty what object delivered the fatal blows.
Given the verdict, the judge will have little leeway when sentencing Jarka, unless the defense can convince the court to toss out the jury’s decision or determine there are extenuating circumstances that would allow for a modification of the term. The hearing will allow the victim’s family and Jarka to address the court.
Since the verdict, a Web site supporting Jarka has been soliciting donations and trying to show that he was wrongly convicted. The site, which indicates is “dedicated to the Kelle Jarka and his defense against the false charges against him,” claims that police and prosecutors convicted the wrong man. It also accuses Murrieta police officers of lying during the trial and that investigators overlooked evidence because they had made of their minds that Kelle had committed the crimes.
The sentencing is scheduled to take place at the Southwest Justice Center near Murrieta.