San Jose, Costa Rica ? The defense attorney for the primary suspect in the 2001 slaying of Kansas University student Shannon Martin has admitted various “inconsistencies” and inaccuracies in the sworn testimony of his client.

Defense lawyer Luis Eduardo Venegas was meeting last week with Kattia Cruz, his imprisoned client, to revise their defense strategy before Tuesday’s preliminary hearing in the southern Pacific port town of Golfito.

Cruz’s testimony, given July 12 in jail, identifies additional suspects Rafael Zumbado, 52, and Luis Alberto Castro, 32, as the perpetrators of the crime. The two men — better known as “Coco” and “Caballo” — were detained in Golfito three days later and sentenced to preventive prison sentences based on 27-year-old Cruz’s statement.

Zumbado and Castro — both of whom maintain their innocence — were released from jail on conditional freedom five months later, when investigators were unable to present additional evidence against the suspects. While Castro is back on the street, Zumbado was later arrested for his alleged involvement in a separate slaying, and is back in preventive custody.

Venegas last week declined to discuss how his client’s testimony would change before being presented to the judge this week. But a dramatic altering of Cruz’s story could potentially affect the prosecutor’s otherwise weak case against Zumbado and Castro.

“We need to change and modify parts of our defense,” Venegas said, noting that without Cruz’s testimony, the prosecution had no case against Zumbado and Castro.

Without Cruz’s statement, the only other evidence police have to go on is testimony from a taxi washer who claims he saw the three suspects together shortly after the slaying. Crime lab tests on hair samples found clutched in Martin’s hand revealed most of the samples were her own hair, and the remaining strands did not match any of the three suspects.

Crime of passion

Martin, a 23-year-old biology student scheduled to graduate from KU with honors, was stabbed to death shortly after midnight May 13, 2001, in Golfito. Her body was found in the early morning hours along an old airstrip access road, 30 meters from her host family’s house and 200 meters from the Jurassic Bar, where she had been at a party shortly before her death.

She was stabbed 14 times — the knife wounds were between 7.5 and 11 centimeters deep — in her back, stomach, neck and arm. An autopsy showed she was stabbed several times after she was dead. Forensic analysis indicated multiple assailants attacked Martin, an athletic gymnast who had been taking kickboxing lessons for more than a year.

Several neighbors told police they heard a woman scream several times sometime after midnight but dismissed the noises because the secluded area was frequently used for sex and drug abuse.

Martin was neither raped nor robbed, except for one gold earring taken from her body. No clear motive has been established for the slaying, but sources close to the investigation said it was most likely a crime of passion — a motive that seemingly does not fit any of the three suspects.

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“Whoever murdered Shannon acted with great anger,” said Pedro Irigonegaray, a Topeka attorney representing Martin’s mother, Jeanette Stauffer. “The multiple stab wounds inflicted during this vicious attack suggest that she was not killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The brutality was immense, and the intention was her assassination.”

The defense lawyer for Cruz said he agreed with the theory it was a crime of passion.

“(Cruz’s) testimony does not establish a motive, but this was a savage crime,” he said. “The motive was passion.”

A black sweatshirt

After 22 months of a frustrated investigation that turned up almost no leads or clues, Golfito Prosecutor Erick Mart————nez formally accused the three suspects of first-degree murder March 19, just hours before the deadline for filing charges was to expire.

One week before the accusation deadline, Jeanette Stauffer, of Topeka, traveled to Costa Rica to deliver an impassioned plea on national television for a taxi driver identified by police as a key witness to come forward with his testimony. Though Stauffer’s plea succeeded in luring the witness out of hiding, the cab driver reportedly did not have the vital information police hoped he would provide.

The primary material evidence in the investigation is the tattered remains of a black sweatshirt, with the words “L.A. Los Angeles,” found at the scene of the crime. Police later traced the shirt and the missing earring to Cruz. The items were found in a pawnshop in the Pacific port town of Puntarenas.

Identified by police and locals as a drug-abusing vagabond known by the street name “Panteonera” (Gravedigger), Cruz fled Golfito a couple of days after the crime, and later took a bus to Puntarenas. She reportedly sold the earring to a Puntarenas pawnshop dealer for slightly more than $1.

The taxi driver who took Cruz to the Puntarenas bus stop in San Jose told police she commented to him she needed to hide out in Puntarenas for a while because she was under suspicion for the murder of a “gringa” in Golfito.

Night of the slaying

In Cruz’s testimony to police — of which this reporter has obtained a copy — she claimed to have gone to Jurassic Bar the night of the slaying to look for a drug dealer identified as “Tayko” to buy crack cocaine. After buying drugs, she sneaked off to the darkened area near the old airstrip to “smoke all the rocks.”

While Cruz was getting high, she said she saw “Caballo” speaking English to a woman nearby, then saw “Coco” stab the woman in the stomach. The two men allegedly turned around and saw Cruz standing in the shadows and began to chase and threaten her, warning that if she said anything about what she saw, her 14-year-old daughter would “pay the price.”

Cruz claims the two men convinced her not to talk, then casually changed the subject as the three walked off together to smoke crack. While they were smoking, Cruz claims she noticed “Caballo” was carrying a lot of money on him, and, apparently forgetting her earlier fears, decided to steal $40 in Costa Rican currency and a gold earring she found in his wallet.

After taking a taxi downtown, she said the three got out and were picked up by police about 3 a.m. and taken to local headquarters for questioning. Several days later, Cruz skipped town and remained in hiding until a police tip revealed she was in Puntarenas, leading to her arrest in November, 2001.

In his defense, Castro — also known as “Caballo” — told police he had nothing to do with the slaying, but that he had been at the Jurassic Bar the night of the crime and remembers seeing Cruz there with her husband. Castro, who claims to have been employed as a butcher at the time, said he knew Cruz only by sight, and said she had a reputation as a “crack head.”

Golfitenos, who knows Castro, however, claims he had been romantically involved with Cruz.

Castro claims he never heard of Shannon Martin until he was questioned by police about her slaying. Meanwhile, other sources said Castro had been dancing with Martin at the Jurassic Bar the night she was stabbed to death.

What next

While it is unclear how Cruz’s altered defense could change the course of events this week, the Golfito judge presiding over Tuesday’s preliminary hearings will have 48 hours to decide whether to send the case to a three-judge tribunal for a murder hearing or whether to throw the case out because of lack of evidence. The judge also could decide to send one or two suspects to trial while freeing others.

A third possibility is that the defendants plead guilty to murder charges Tuesday, in which case the judge would send the case to the Justice Tribunals for handing down of sentences.

However, given the political implications of the case — several influential U.S. lawmakers as well as U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations Director Robert Mueller have expressed personal interest in the case — the judge is expected to send the case to trial.

“Emotionally, I know that this could end in disappointment,” Stauffer said last week. “I have been giving myself some breathing room recently so I don’t have a complete nervous breakdown afterwards.”

— Tim Rogers is a reporter for the Tico Times, an English-language weekly published in San Jose.