FULL TEXT: Terri Gilbert gasped and cried out in relief as a
state District Court jury Friday found her not guilty of murdering her
estranged husband, County Commissioner Eugene Gilbert.
But Lauren Gilbert Eugene Gilbert's 24-year-old daughter and
a key prosecution witness against her stepmother cried out and collapsed in
grief as state District Judge Frank Allen Jr. read the verdicts shortly after
2:30 p.m.
Terri Gilbert also was cleared of charges she had tampered
with evidence.
The jury foreman said jurors "went through all of the
evidence exhaustively. There just weren't enough solid pieces to come
together" for the prosecution to prove its case and disprove the defense's
self-defense case beyond a reasonable doubt.
Earlier Friday, after getting word the jury had reached a
verdict after a little more than 212 days of deliberation, the 51-year-old
defendant entered the packed courtroom accompanied by her attorneys Charles
Daniels and Randi McGinn wearing sunglasses and a tense, strained expression on
her face.
She appeared on the verge of tears as jurors filed in and
the bailiff handed their verdicts to the judge.
But her tears became tears of joy as the verdicts were read.
"I'm terribly relieved, and I'm terribly thankful to
the jury for listening," she told reporters afterward while being
comforted by friends and her daughter, Shawn.
Later, as she left the courtroom, she told a large crowd of
reporters in the hallway, "I believe in the system."
And, she said, "I can't say enough for my two
attorneys." They also said they were "relieved" by the verdicts.
"I have believed in Terri from the very
beginning," said Daniels, who said he met his client for the first time in
jail shortly after 4 a.m. on Aug. 19, while she was still barefoot and without
her eyeglasses or contacts.
"The facts have not changed since that time,"
Daniels said.
"I think the police made up their minds pretty
quickly" that Terri Gilbert was guilty of murder, he said.
An angry Randall Harris, the Curry Roosevelt County district
attorney who was one of two special prosecutors in the case, told reporters
after the verdict, "This woman's gotten away with murder twice."
He was referring to the death of Terri Gilbert's second
husband, Stephen Hotchkiss, in Corrales on Nov. 18, 1974.
Terri Gilbert, then known as Terri Hotchkiss, shot Stephen
Hotchkiss to death, claiming self-defense after he attacked her with a
lead-filled homemade blackjack. She had to be hospitalized with severe
injuries.
The shooting was investigated, but she was never prosecuted.
A Sandoval County grand jury declined to return an indictment.
The jury of seven men and five women who sat through 10 days
of testimony on the death of her third husband, Eugene Gilbert, never heard
about the earlier shooting, which was excluded as being too prejudicial.
What jurors heard was an agreement by attorneys on both
sides that all that would be said about the prior shooting was that "Terri
Gilbert had previously fired a handgun in self-defense" and that
"Eugene Gilbert knew she had previously fired a handgun in
self-defense."
On Aug. 18, 1996, police responded to a frantic 911 call
from Terri Gilbert saying she'd just shot a man at her University of New
Mexico-area home.
She told police four hours after the shooting that she'd
fired at a man who surreptitiously and silently entered her house and followed
her into her darkened basement. She said she warned the man she had a gun, but
he kept on coming. So she fired three times with the 9 mm handgun her husband
had brought into the house some months earlier and killed him not knowing it
was her husband, she told police.
By the time she talked to police that night, they already
knew about the earlier shooting. They testified at the trial about
"problems" and "concerns" they had almost immediately with
her version of events.
Harris said jurors "would have come to a different
conclusion if they'd heard about the first shooting" and other evidence
kept out of the trial.
He was named special prosecutor after it was learned that a
local prosecutor was Eugene Gilbert's longtime girlfriend.
Harris said Eugene Gilbert's surviving family members might
have a better chance of winning their wrongful death lawsuit against Terri
Gilbert because of the more relaxed standards of proof in civil court.
"Maybe it works like the O.J. Simpson (civil) case ...
maybe they can get all the information in," Harris said.
"The problem is, there's really no justice in this
case," Harris added. "Nothing's going to bring back Gene Gilbert.
Nothing's going to bring back Stephen Hotchkiss."
The jurors who agreed to an unusual post-verdict interview
with newspaper reporters as long as they weren't identified by name said that
even if evidence of the earlier shooting had come in, they would have treated
it as a completely separate case.
"Obviously there was a whole lot more about both of
their lives that, for some reason, didn't come in," said the jury foreman.
The prosecution's case was built on circumstantial evidence,
he said.
"It was a very difficult case for them to prosecute,
and I suspect this one was particularly tough," the foreman said.
People who have never served on a jury, he said, "have
no idea how confined we are to the evidence that's presented."
Meanwhile, a more composed but still tearful Lauren Gilbert,
with her mother at her side, told reporters on the courthouse steps, "I
just want everyone to remember my dad for who he was before this
happened."
Eugene Gilbert, who was 49 when he died, "did a lot for
this city; he did a lot for this state; he did a lot for this country"
both as a Bernalillo County commissioner and as a Vietnam War veteran who
"would do anything for veterans," she said.
"It's such a tragedy he didn't die there
(Vietnam)," she said, weeping. "He had to come home and die in his
own house."
[Bruce Daniels, “Terri Gilbert Found Not Guilty Jury: Not
Enough 'Solid Pieces',” Albuquerque Journal (Az.), Jun. 6, 1998, p. 1]
***
CHRONOLOGY
May 8, 1947 – Terri born.
Nov. 18, 1974 – Stephen Hotchkiss (27), husband # 2, was
shot to death in in a trailer in Corrales. A grand jury ruled that the shooting
was justifiable homicide and she was not charged.
Mar. 1986 – Gilbert, 49, filed for divorce in March, citing "discord and conflict" as the reason.
Aug. 18, 1986 – Eugene Gilbert
(49), husband #3, dies; shot to death.
Jun. 5, 1998 – Terri Gilbert (51) found not guilty of E.
Gilbert murder, due to lack of evidence.
Mar. 17, 2005 – “Snapped,” Terri Gilbert episode aired.
***
***
***
***
***
For links to other cases of woman who murdered 2 or more husbands (or paramours), see Black Widow Serial Killers.
***
[419-1/3/2021; 1292-10/5/21]
***
Might be worth noting that Steven Hotchkiss did not attack Terri in a drunken rage, as was reported on Snapped. He was delivering Terri's belongings to her after their separation, as confirmed by his EMT partner, and owner of the vehicle he drive. The coroner's report showed no sign of intoxication. Additionally, he was mutilated after he was shot in "self-defense". His face was crushed by multiple blows from a pistol butt with such violence that it broke the pistol.
ReplyDeleteRe: The Gilbert trial, there was plenty of evidence. The defense (one of the top criminal defense firms in the city) had the trial moved out of town so that the prosecutor had basically no help. They essentially buried the prosecutor in paperwork. The defense succeeded in keeping much of the critical evidence, including the earlier murder, from the jury.
I've just watch this today on City Confidential. I truly believe Terri is guilty of both crimes.
DeleteShe knows she killed him. The first murder should have been told to the jury. She wouldn't have gotten away with it. She called him there under fault pretend. She probably told him she was going to give him the money knowing that he was going to come. She will have to justify it with God one day. So sad.
ReplyDelete