Who Is Buried in the Joshua Cox Family Cemetary
Former Twentynine Palms Marine Curtis Lee Krueger, in an unusual movement past a defendant accused of murder, took the stand up on Tuesday during his ongoing trial and admitted to jurors he did impale the human he believed had raped his ex-girlfriend, but he claimed information technology was done in self-defence.
Krueger, 32, is accused of killing 54-year-old Henry Alan Stange who, according to court testimony, was sleeping with Krueger's then-girlfriend, Ashlie Nicole Stapp, and also supplying her with drugs.
Government believe Krueger killed the Murrieta man and then tried to get rid of his body. A hiker found Stange'due south half-buried remains in Joshua Tree National Park in June 2018, slightly more than a week subsequently he was killed, according to court testimony.
Krueger's trial began Aug. 17 at the Southwest Justice Center in Murrieta. He has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, he could face life in prison.
Stapp, 29, pleaded guilty last year to acting as an accompaniment to roofing upwards the crime after the fact. She was sentenced to 36 months of probation and committed to a substance addiction rehabilitation program.
On Monday, she testified as a defense force witness. Krueger, who was not scheduled to testify, opted to accept the stand up after hearing his former girlfriend'south testimony.
Krueger and Stapp separately told jurors they attempted to industry a story to obscure what took identify.
Stapp downplayed the romantic nature of her human relationship with Stange, whom she became familiar with afterward purchasing pain medication from him in 2017.
Stapp said her relationship with Stange was consensual, in that she traded sex for drugs to feed her habit. She failed to communicate this to Krueger, she testified, and he attacked Stange twice in a fury fueled by his wrong belief that Stange was a sexual predator.
Stapp said she planned on telling the police she had killed Stange, but the story savage autonomously during the investigation.
"He had a career, he had a future ahead of him," Stapp said of Krueger. "I could get to prison house because I'm a nobody."
Krueger testified Stange pulled a knife on him and he lethally injured the man while defending himself. Krueger said the idea to bury Stange's body and deny killing him was Stapp's thought.
"I never liked that option of treatment it that way, simply Ashlie was persistent," Kruger testified. "I just stopped arguing with her almost it."
'My drug dealer'
Prosecuting chaser Daniel DeLimon repeatedly emphasized the consensual and sexual nature of Stapp'south relationship with Stange, proverb they shared their addiction and partied together.
Stapp didn't deny that estimation, but said she was never Stange'due south girlfriend. She testified that quondam in 2017 she awoke at Stange's firm, tied to the bed with a camera placed on a bookshelf recording her.
She had "been violated," she said.
She conceded that Stange thought of their human relationship differently, telling her he was in honey, introducing her to his children and saying he wanted to spend the residue of his life with her.
For her, though, the relationship was primarily fueled by her addiction.
When questioned by DeLimon, Stapp said she considered Stange "my drug dealer."
Stapp kept her addiction and her relationship with Stange secret not just from her family, but from Krueger, whom she started dating in fall 2017. But the hush-hush was both hard to go on and afford, she testified, as she began consuming approximately $600 worth of pills a 24-hour interval.
Meanwhile, Stapp'southward relationship with Krueger was getting serious.
"Curtis was someone I was actually interested in, someone I wanted to have my life together for, which is why I hid my drug addiction from him," Stapp said.
Krueger testified that he was not aware of her drug addiction until January 2018, merely had his suspicions nigh where she was going and who she was hanging out with. When DeLimon questioned Krueger well-nigh detailed notes he had taken on his phone indicating he idea she was adulterous on him, Krueger said she would tell him he "was existence paranoid and jealous."
Merely when Stange would e-mail Stapp telling her he had filled his prescription, she testified, she'd make upward an excuse to bulldoze from Twentynine Palms to the Murrieta expanse to take drugs with him.
The bulwark of secrecy that kept her two lives apart, Stapp testified, began to dissolve in 2018.
In January, she left Stange's house after spending a day with him. She was slightly intoxicated, she recalled, and stopped at an ampm in Murrieta to get gas. And then Krueger drove upwardly and confronted her well-nigh where she'd been.
Krueger testified she told him she was an addict and that she had been raped past a man who provided her with drugs. Krueger said he became concerned for her safety, but Stapp asked him to drive her back to the home so she could go some of her holding.
Stapp, Krueger testified, grabbed a key from under a doormat and entered the home. When they attempted to go out, Krueger said, a man grabbed at Stapp in the night and Krueger started swinging.
"I overreacted," Krueger said, not being able to retrieve how many times he hit him. They fled, Krueger said, and Stapp told him not to call the police.
Stapp'south version of the story, however, is dissimilar. She said Krueger demanded that she straight him to Stange's home. She watched as Krueger got a steel framing hammer from the back of his truck and walked into the business firm in the nighttime.
"He went in at that place and did something he shouldn't have washed," Stapp said. "He said he didn't know if (Stange) was alive."
'A scream of pain and desperation and despair...'
The cold reality of the hammer attack began to gear up in for Stapp. She testified she'd started to think "if he could do that to him, he could practise that to me."
The two were living for the commencement months of 2018 in an abandoned dwelling house in Twentynine Palms. Stapp testified she remembered Krueger throwing the hammer, bent sideways from the force of the beating, into the desert near the property where they were squatting.
Krueger said he discarded the hammer, which was later plant by investigators, considering he "didn't desire to remember that night."
He added that his concerns nigh Stapp's double life were growing, that she might be lying to him almost being raped and she might be cheating on him. He tried to break up with her, he said, but failed.
"I felt convicted in my centre that I need to exist more loving and patient, to give her a chance to be sober," Krueger testified.
Meanwhile, Stapp couldn't stay away from Stange.
She visited him the day after the hammer set on to see if he was OK. She remembered his couch pillows were covered in claret. She said he was "haemorrhage from his ears" and likely had a concussion.
On May 23, Stange emailed her and said his prescription had been filled.
The next solar day, Stapp said, she drove to her mother's house and hid her phone in the bushes so she couldn't be tracked. She parked her car in Stange'due south driveway and they spent well-nigh an hour snorting crushed-upward hurting medication in his living room.
"I came over. We got loftier. I slept with him. I went to the bathroom and he went into the garage," Stapp testified.
And then she said she heard a "scream of pain and agony and despair." Krueger entered the bath and told her they needed to leave.
"He just kind of looked frazzled, his optics were kind of big, he looked worried," Stapp said. "He said he had done something bad."
'I idea he was trying to impale me...'
Krueger's story of the killing was quite dissimilar from Stapp's. He testified she had failed to show up to a family twenty-four hours on the base.
He tracked her phone to her female parent's firm, Krueger said, but couldn't find her. He went to the gas station where she told him about Stange raping her. He and so wondered if she was again at Stange'south house.
"Considering she had got raped the last time she was there, I was concerned that was happening over again," he testified.
He found her auto at Stange's house, Krueger testified, and approached with caution. He saw Stange in the garage and entered.
Krueger said he asked where Stapp was, but Stange said she wasn't there. Stange then walked from backside some equipment and pulled a knife on him.
"I slapped his manus down and I struggled with him a bit," Krueger said, calculation he took the knife from the man and "put it in his neck."
The two fell to the flooring and connected to wrestle. Krueger said Stange picked upwardly a weight and tried to strike him with information technology. But Krueger took the weight and hit Stange with it several times. When he got up, Stange grabbed his leg, and Krueger said he stomped on him.
"I thought he was trying to kill me," he said.
Krueger then found Stapp in the bath and told her they needed to leave.
Later, at Stapp's mother's business firm, they decided to return to the scene, where they found Stange expressionless. It was Stapp's idea to conceal the crime, Krueger said.
"Ashlie was right behind me and she started panicking, she grabbed a canteen of bleach and started pouring it," he testified. "She was convinced if I called the police I would become thrown in jail."
'I was defenseless upwards in my lie and my truth...'
In the months that followed, Stapp said, she was consumed with paranoia about whether they would be caught. Merely Krueger wasn't. She said he returned to work the adjacent twenty-four hours and constantly reassured her they wouldn't be defenseless.
Krueger said Stapp insisted he go on up the ruse, even as investigators started asking questions. Unbeknownst to them both, authorities were wiretapping their phones and recording their conversations.
The 2 were arrested and questioned in late 2018, and their story began to fall apart.
Wiretaps and phone records showed Krueger was near the scene at the time of the killing and police force were confident he was the killer. When they presented Stapp with this theory, she began to cave.
"I was caught upwardly in my lie and my truth," she testified.
"I was trying to protect (Krueger) and I was trying to protect myself," she added. "I was nevertheless stuck in a fantasy that we were going to be together and live a 'happily ever later on.'"
The killing, Stapp told jurors, was Krueger's anger getting the better of him.
"He lost it," Stapp remembered him proverb. When DeLimon asked why he lost control, Stapp responded, "Because he had anger issues."
Krueger told jurors he wasn't thinking clearly when he went to Stange's business firm the second time. He believed Stapp was in danger, but also suspected she could be cheating.
Krueger said he was wrapped up in Stapp's push to conceal the crime.
Krueger testified that he threw the knife Stange attacked him with in a trash can at a Lowe's in Hemet before he bought the shovel he used to coffin the body. He said he disposed of other evidence in trash cans along the drive back.
"The only proof that Henry attacked you lot is your give-and-take?" DeLimon asked Krueger during his testimony.
"Yes, sir," Krueger responded.
Trial proceedings were not scheduled Wednesday, simply resumed on Thursday.
Christopher Damien covers law-breaking, public safety and the criminal justice organization. He tin can exist reached at christopher.damien@desertsun.com or follow him at @chris_a_damien.
Source: https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/crime_courts/2020/09/03/marine-who-buried-dead-body-joshua-tree-national-park-testifies/3452777001/