Jurors must enter the mind of a drug-addled killer as they determine whether to send a Quincy man to prison for the rest of his life for the murder of a retired doctor in 2005, an attorney for the suspect said yesterday.
In an unusual move in Suffolk Superior Court, Matthew Kamholtz acknowledged that his client, Stevie Walker, 44, attacked Galina Kotik inside her Fenway apartment, leaving the 65-year-old with a knife in her neck.
"The evidence will point to Stevie Walker as the person who committed the violence," Kamholtz said in his opening statement. "This case is going to be what was inside Stevie Walker's head."
Kamholtz told jurors that Walker was coming off a 24-hour crack cocaine binge when he got inside Kotik's sixth-floor apartment near Symphony Hall.
Prosecutors contend that Walker was intent on robbing Kotik to keep his binge going.
Kamholtz said Walker, who has a history of personality disorder, has no memory of the attack.
Kamholtz urged jurors to consider convicting Walker, who was living in Quincy at the time of the killing and working for temporary labor companies, of a lesser charge than first-degree murder.
But Suffolk Assistant District Attorney Mark Hallal told the panel that Walker made a series of conscious decisions that show he was in full command of his faculties that afternoon.
He said Walker smashed Kotik in the back of the head with an ash tray to stop her cries for help, and then stabbed her more than 20 times with a carving knife.
Hallal said Walker had been smoking crack for 24 hours - followed by a nap - with two friends in the apartment below Kotik's and that he was told a mentally challenged woman lived there. Hallal said Walker went to rob the apartment to keep drugs flowing.
While he was inside the apartment, neighbors summoned help and the building manager struggled with Walker in the victim's bathroom, Hallal said.
Walker then ran into a nearby parking garage and hid in a storage closet, which a worker padlocked, trapping him for about 40 hours until he forced his way out of a window.
Once free, Walker went in his blood-stained clothes to the police station in the South End and fell asleep in the lobby. Police took him into custody.
In 2005, Kotik's relatives said that she was a doctor in her native Belarus and had immigrated to Rhode Island in 1996.
Kotik had moved to the residence for the elderly and the disabled in Boston a few months before she was slain.
One of Kotik's children, Natasha, spent yesterday in court in tears.
The trial resumes today.
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