Crew is a 36-year-old resident of Cedar Rapids, Iowa who says she and Widmer had a phone relationship. She e-mailed him through the freeryanwidmer.com website after seeing the “Dateline NBC” episode featuring the Widmer case. The two made calls to each other, and sent text messages.
Her identity was shielded until the start of the trial Jan. 26 in Warren County Common Pleas Court because prosecutors said Widmer threatened harm to her. Crew had told investigators he admitted to murdering his wife, Sarah, in their Hamilton Twp. home Aug. 11, 2008. She was called to the stand Wednesday, where she said an inebriated Widmer told her he had gotten in an argument with his wife of four months about an alleged affair. That night, they also fought about him looking at pornography, his drinking and smoking.
Sarah told him she was leaving him, Crew said.
In a rage, he told his wife, “No one leaves me,” and punched her in the chest in the bathroom where she was drawing a bath and she hit her head, Crew testified.
She said Widmer blacked out and when he came to, his wife was lying unresponsive on the bathroom floor and her hair was wet.
Is Crew a credible witness?
Former judge and Hamilton County Prosecutor Mike Allen says he knows he is likely in the minority, but he thought Crew’s testimony was legit.
“Her demeanor was appropriate, she was well spoken and she did really well on direct,” said Allen, who currently represents criminal defendants. “She got a little contentious and confrontational on cross examination... I’m thinking she held up well.”
Crew’s testimony that Widmer punched his wife in the chest doesn’t jibe with forensic evidence presented in the case. All the bruising found in two autopsies showed hemorrhaging and bruising in the neck area, not the chest.
Allen said that isn’t a big deal, especially since Widmer allegedly said he blacked out.
“My experience is if a jury perceives someone to be generally credible, they’ll forgive them some errors on relatively minor details,” he said. “But she says the black out thing ... my experience is from both sides of the aisle, whenever a criminal defendant does not want to get down to the nitty gritty of what happened ... they use a blackout cop out, and that could account for his not giving her all of the details.”
Jury expert and adjunct professor Thaddeus Hoffmeister from the University of Dayton law school disagrees.
Crew’s criminal convictions for theft and forgery may make her untrustworthy to some. Crew admitted she used several aliases to obtain prescription drugs, and she is currently in a Methadone program for her drug abuse.
Hoffmeister said her testimony was inconsistent on many levels with what the jury has heard from other witnesses. For example, Crew testified Widmer was worried about the tipped over trash can in the bathroom. Warren County Sheriff’s deputy Steve Bishop testified he emptied it while looking for clues.
“You balance that with everything else about her background ... how do you weigh her testimony as favorable?” Hoffmeister asked. “If you weigh it on a scale, her testimony is spotty at best. If I would have heard it from a nun, I’d say OK,” he said.
“Her testimony is spotty and she comes with all this baggage, why is this person credible?”
Will Widmer testify in this trial?
The prosecution has called 24 witnesses so far, and is expected to rest its case Monday.
Hoffmeister does not feel prosecutors have proven Widmer’s guilt. But Allen says they made it clear Widmer, now 30, drowned his wife. He points to how they cured mistakes in two previous trials. Despite that, he said, he is doubtful Widmer will take the stand.
“They do not want to do that,” he said. “I’ve spoken with previous attorneys on this case and the defense does not want to put him on the witness stand. I don’t think they think he’s up to it, from an attitude and demeanor perspective.”
In the two previous trials, Widmer did not testify. The first jury found him guilty, but Judge Neal Bronson tossed the verdict because of juror misconduct.
The second jury last spring was deadlocked.
If Widmer takes the stand, it is likely First Assistant Prosecutor John Arnold will cross examine him. Hoffmeister said he doubts the defense will allow their client to talk.
“The danger is you have a man who has been doing this for 20 years and is a skilled prosecutor, which I think he is,” Hoffmeister said. “He can make an honest person look like they are hiding something, he can make them look guilty.”
One of the jurors from the second trial, who voted not guilty, has attended some of this trial and followed the courtroom blogs. What strikes her, she said, is that with virtually the same witnesses for the prosecution — excluding Crew and Crew’s significant other — this trial is different from the case she heard. New information has come out in this trial, but she still believes he is innocent.
“My big impression is there still is not evidence to find him guilty,” she said. “If you can take evidence and you can make a scenario to prove him guilty and you can also make a scenario that he is innocent, I think that’s reasonable doubt and you can do that.”
Changed during this trial was the testimony of Sarah’s mother, Ruth Ann Steward. In her two previous statements she did not describe the couple’s relationship as terribly strained. This time she said they were sometimes “hateful” toward each other.
Ian Friedman, a past president of the Ohio Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, said it is not unusual that this trial is different.
“This is the third attempt at successful prosecution, so I would expect it to be different,” he said. “It would be difficult to throw up the exact same case three times over and expect a different result.”
Contact this reporter at (513) 696-4525 or dcallahan@coxohio.com.
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