Brno, July 19 (CTK) – Czech state attorney Ludmila Dolezalova proposed life sentence for U.S. citizen Kevin Dahlgren, 24, charged with murdering a four-member family of his Czech cousin in Brno-Ivanovice in May 2013, at the Brno Regional Court yesterday.
Life security detention is also taken into consideration for Dahlgren. The court will issue the verdict at 09:00 CEST on Wednesday.
Dahlgren made a long speech in court yesterday.
He thoroughly described his psychological state at the time of the crime, his anxieties, frustrations and negative thoughts, which he did not consider his own. It seemed that he would speak of the events that occurred on the day of the crime, but he only said he considers the death of his relatives a great tragedy.
Until now, Dahlgren refused to give testimony in the courtroom.
Dolezalova said it can be concluded from indirect evidence that the defendant is the perpetrator, which both expert opinions and the evidence about his whereabouts on the day of the murder support.
The analysis of the defendant’s movement shows that nobody else had the time and possibility to kill the victims, clean the house, move the bodies into the garage and try to set the house on fire, she said.
Dahlgren basically exterminated one functioning family, she added.
Dahlgren’s defence counsel Richard Spisek points out that there are no direct pieces of evidence proving his client’s guilt.
Neither the postwoman nor the cleaning lady who talked to Dahlgren that morning noticed the 39 stains on his trousers, which the state attorneys submitted as evidence. It cannot be concluded when exactly the family members were murdered, Sisak added.
Dahlgren, who has been in custody in Brno since last year, is charged with having brutally killed the family with whom he lived in Brno – the father, the mother and their two sons including an underage one. Immediately afterwards he left for the USA, but the FBI arrested him on his arrival in Washington based on the warning from the Czech police.
Dahlgren is the first U.S. citizen who was extradited for prosecution in the Czech Republic.
His trial started at the Brno Regional Court in late May.
A number of witnesses, including the family’s neighbours and a girlfriend of one of the killed sons, testified in court, along with pathologists who described the brutal multiple injuries of the victims.
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