The triple-homicide trial of a former Tucson firefighter ended Thursday with what one prosecutor called โwild storiesโ told by defense attorneys to distract jurors.
David Watson, who worked in the Tucson Fire Department from 1995 to 2015, was charged in April 2015 with two counts of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder in Pima County Superior Court.
Watson, 47, is accused of killing his ex-wife, Linda, 35, in 2000. After she disappeared from her house in the 2600 block of West Curtis Road, sheriffโs deputies found a broken coffee cup and blood on a cooler, vacuum cleaner, and the floor.
Watson also is accused of shooting and killing Lindaโs mother Marilyn Cox, 63, and Coxโs neighbor Renee Farnsworth, 53, in 2003.
Cox had accused Watson of her daughterโs disappearance and battled with Watson over visitation rights for the 4-year-old daughter of David and Linda Watson. Farnsworth was with Cox the day the two were gunned down in Coxโs driveway after dropping off the daughter at David Watsonโs house.
In her closing argument, defense attorney Natasha Wrae said no evidence presented by the state in the seven-week trial directly tied Watson to the crimes.
She displayed photos on a projector screen in the courtroom of five people who she said were more likely than David Watson to have killed Linda Watson.
Wrae pointed to โunknownsโ in the case, such as the possibility that Linda Watson died of an accidental drowning or the killers were actually four Hispanic men in a Cadillac seen in the area.
In another โhypothetical,โ Wrae said one of the victims may have had a suicide pact with her sick mother and hired an assassin to kill her so the family could collect the insurance money.
Prosecutor Nicol Green told jurors those arguments were โwild storiesโ with no basis in reality.
โItโs a detour that leads nowhere,โ Green said as she warned jurors not to allow the defenseโs hypotheticals to sway them.
โSuicide with a hired killer? Are you kidding me?โ she said.
The defense focused much of its efforts at implicating the former boyfriend of one of the victims, but that man had an alibi, Green said.
Deputy County Attorney Jonathan Mosher called the double-murder an โassassinationโ and linked all three murders to the contentious custody battles.
Mosher sought to discredit the idea that the five people put forth by Wrae could have committed the murders, saying the woman who told police about the five people suffers from a brain injury and hallucinates.
David Watson did not have an alibi and he was the only person who had a motive to kill the three victims, Mosher said.
Watson thought he committed the โperfect murder,โ Mosher said.
Prosecutors said a gun Watson owned at the time was consistent with the type of gun used to kill Cox and Farnsworth. The defense said thousands of guns also would be consistent.
Two people who saw portions of the 2003 killings described someone who fit the physical description of Watson, Mosher said.
Wrae questioned the investigative techniques used in the case, saying authorities do not know how much of the residue found on the floor of Linda Watsonโs house was bleach, human blood, or animal blood. She also criticized a detective for poor note-taking.
The murders had gone unsolved until 2007 when Watsonโs ex-wife, Rosemary, told police she lied when she provided Watsonโs alibi for the murders. Watson was promoted to captain at TFD the same year.
Hunters found Linda Watsonโs skull in 2003, but it was not identified until 2011. The delay was due to authorities believing the skull may have belonged to a border crosser who died in the desert west of Tucson.
Jury deliberations are scheduled to begin Friday morning.
