Final arguments given in homicide trial
<p>Robert Wittal talks with his attorney during his trial for deliberate homicide at the Flathead County Courthouse on Wednesday. (Aaric Bryan/Daily Inter Lake)</p>
Prosecutors gave jurors an impassioned plea Thursday morning to convict a Kalispell man of stabbing another man 25 times and leaving his body in Brown’s Creek in the Echo Lake area earlier this year.
The jury was given the case at around 11 a.m., and will decide whether or not Robert Matthew Wittal is guilty of one count of felony deliberate homicide for the death of 35-yaer-old Wade Rautio.
Rautio’s body was found June 13 after David Toman, 20, of Kalispell led investigators with the Flathead County Sheriff’s Office to the crime scene and said that he had been witness to the murder.
Testimony in the four-day trial established that multiple people saw Wittal, Toman, and Christopher Hansen, 28, leave the Evergreen home of Melisa Crone, 29, the day of the murder.
Rautio was not with the trio when they returned. Prosecutors introduced testimony and evidence that suggested Wittal was a drug enforcer who wanted to hurt Rautio.
“Robert Wittal brutally murdered Wade Rautio for stealing from him and the enforcer couldn’t have that,” prosecutor John Donovan said.
But Wittal’s attorney Steven Scott claimed that it was Toman, Hansen and Crone who were responsible for the murder and that there was an elaborate plot to set Wittal up. He pointed to small inconsistencies in the larger story.
“Their stories are hopelessly irreconcilable,” Scott said.
Scott told the jury that someone should be convicted in the murder, but not his client. Crone, Toman and Hansen are all set to go to trial next year for accountability to deliberate homicide.
“They are going to be held accountable,” Scott said. “Their day in court is coming... We are confident that at the end of deliberations you will find Robert Wittal not guilty.”