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Date Posted: 23:37:37 03/11/02 Mon
Killer or swiller?
By Matt Bean
Court TV - www.courttv.com
A Florida man at the center of a love triangle exposed on the "Jerry Springer Show" is either a killer or a drunk, lawyers said Monday in their opening statements of his Sarasota murder trial.
Neither is a desired label, but for Ralf Panitz, 41, who is facing life in prison for strangling his former wife, the distinction is crucial. Prosecutors charge he murdered his wife in a fury after she obtained a ruling banning him from the house they leased in 2000.
But according to Panitz's attorney, well-known defense lawyer Geoffrey Fieger, the German citizen was too drunk to have committed the brutal July 24, 2000, killing that left Nancy Campbell dead in her home.
The killing put a final stop to a bizarre love triangle, immortalized on the "Jerry Springer Show," that found Ralf Panitz shuttling between his former wife, Nancy, and his new wife, Eleanor.
Fieger has said he plans to call talk show host Jerry Springer to testify about the show — taped May 7, 2000, and titled "Secret Mistresses Confronted." In the episode, Ralf Panitz and his new wife, Eleanor Panitz, told Nancy Campbell to leave them alone.
Panitz and Campbell, 52, married in 1997 and divorced in 1999.
After her marriage to, and subsequent reunion with, Panitz failed, Campbell sought an order of protection against him on July 24, 2000, at the Saratoga County District Court, claiming he had threatened her life. Later that day, she was found face down in her own blood.
Prosecutor Charles Roberts said that jurors would hear a tape of Campbell's appearance in court that day, during which she told the judge her ex-husband threatened to kill her and her family. Her words, said Roberts, foreshadowed her killing later that day.
Campbell's argument was powerful enough for the judge to grant the order, which stipulated that Ralf Panitz cease contact with his former wife and stay 500 feet away from her at all times. This forced Panitz to leave the Sarasota home he leased with Campbell in 2000, the same home he once invited his current wife back into even while Campbell remained.
Following the granting of that order, Roberts argued, Ralf Panitz was incensed. He unleashed a verbal tirade that the lawyer said caused bailiffs to ask him to leave the courthouse. "The f**ing bitch isn't getting the house," he scowled, according to Roberts.
Panitz was so angry that he ignored the restraining order, Roberts said. "The judge ... tried to protect Nancy Campbell. The sheriff's department tried to protect Nancy Campbell. And even Nancy Campbell alone in her house later that day tried to protect herself by barricading herself [inside]," the lawyer said. "None of that was enough. Nancy Campbell was no match for the violent and vengeful black belt intruder, the defendant."
The prosecution is expected to match bloody footprints found at the crime scene to the size 10 and a half boots Panitz was wearing that day, and introduce DNA evidence linking him to the crime.
But defense attorney Fieger wasted no time refuting the physical evidence Roberts said he would marshal against Panitz, telling the jury that he plans to call a litany of expert witnesses, including Michael Baden, former chief medical examiner of New York City.
The experts, the lawyer said, "will provide you with clear evidence that Nancy Campbell wasn't murdered, but died as a result of longstanding diabetes ... of high blood pressure ... and of significant heart disease." The defense suggests that she may have fallen and hit her head.
Fieger argued that the defendant was drunk the day of the murder and incapable of walking 40 feet to a fast food restaurant without falling asleep, let alone committing the murder, which left his ex-wife unrecognizable.
According to Fieger, Panitz began drinking "tallboys" at a 7-11 near the house on Grand Cayman Street the day of the murder and then went with his nephew, Markus Panitz, to Keegan's Clubhouse to continue drinking. There the two men planned to watch the "Jerry Springer" episode taped earlier that year.
Alcohol intervened. At the bar, said Fieger, Panitz threw back two to four more beers before moving onto rum and cokes. By the time the episode began, Panitz became so intoxicated that he believed the actor Chevy Chase to be at the bar, and even invited the specter over for a drink. The proprietors of the bar, Fieger said, will testify regarding his client's conduct that day.
Meanwhile, as Panitz remained "literally unconscious at the bar," Fieger said, Nancy Campbell was doing what the lawyer characterized as "dirty work," seeking another injunction at the courthouse to counter the restraining order Eleanor Panitz had obtained rendering Campbell's earlier order mute.
But according to his lawyer, Ralf Panitz was in a blur through much of the whirlwind day of "dueling injunctions."
"Could Ralf Panitz — deliriously drunk — fight Nancy Campbell hopping on one foot, then clean up the blood evidence, lock the house from the inside, barricade the front door door from the inside and leave without any fingerprints and nobody seeing him? Could he even stand on one foot?" the attorney asked.
The lawyer claimed that the bloody bootprints came from only one shoe, the right boot of a type Markus Panitz wore.
Fieger suggested that the police overlooked Markus Panitz's possible role in the death, and promised to produce photos taken the day of the killing that would show the defendant's nephew with blood stains on his clothing.
The only witness of the day, Deputy Paul Fern of the Sarasota County Sheriff's Department, told the court he arrived at the scene to find Nancy Campbell lying in blood. Fern also testified that the door was barricaded from the inside.
The trial, which is being broadcast live by Court TV, resumes Tuesday at 8:45 a.m., ET.
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