The prosecution zeroed in on defendant Earl Voyles Thursday, offering a description of bizarre behavior the night Megan Maxwell was murdered, and just a hint of his history of violence.
However, the hint may have gone too far. When Voyles' ex-wife described his reaction to her leaving him as "extreme rage," the defense demanded a mistrial and Judge Philip Volland took the matter under advisement over the weekend.
Voyles, 38, is charged with killing Maxwell, 22, early on the morning of Oct. 4, 2003. Her body was found in a stairwell of her Russian Jack condo complex. She had been strangled and stabbed.
Voyles was staying with his brother in another apartment in the complex. His wife of less than two years had left him several months before the murder and gone into hiding.
According to Melanie Ritter, who testified that she spent time drinking beer and doing crack with Voyles a few hours before Maxwell was killed, he was "really agitated" and "distressed" about not being able to find his wife. He was crying, threatening suicide, and scratching his arms with a knife, she said.
At the time, Ritter was the girlfriend of Voyles' brother, James, who owned a first-floor unit in Maxwell's building. The two brothers, Ritter, and a third male were in the apartment at various times that night.
Ritter said Earl Voyles' behavior made her so uncomfortable that she took a couple cans of beer into the bedroom and waited for James to come to bed. After he did, Earl left the apartment and came back several times until James got annoyed at the sound of the door banging and locked him out.
About five-foot-nothing and six months pregnant, Ritter was reluctant to testify, but once on the stand she was chatty and uncowed by the formalized ritual of the courtroom. She seemed to take delight in telling the jury she and James were "butt naked" when police knocked on their door the next morning.
The defense has fingered brother James as the killer, but Ritter resisted any suggestion he might be the bad guy.
"James is not the one on trial here, thank you very much," she said to defense attorney Joseph Van De Mark at one point.
Earl Voyles' ex-wife Stacey Richards followed Ritter to the stand.
Generally, prosecutors aren't allowed to call ex-wives as witnesses so they can tell jurors about bad behavior far removed from the crime at hand. Earlier this week, with the jury out of the room, Van De Mark was angered that Richards, who divorced Voyles last year, might be allowed to testify that he was scary and had a bad temper.
"How is this relevant?" Van De Mark said more than once. "What does this have to do with who killed Megan Maxwell?"
Prosecutor Marcy McDannel said Voyles' anger at his wife had everything to do with why Maxwell died.
Voyles and Maxwell didn't know each other, except perhaps as casual neighbors. She had nothing valuable on her when she was attacked and she wasn't raped. So why would Voyles want to kill her?
The prosecution says it's a case of "transferred intent." Voyles was in a rage at his wife, but he couldn't get at her so he killed Maxwell instead.
To explain the state's theory, McDannel said she needed Richards to tell jurors that Voyles was mad at her and so threatening that she went into hiding.
Volland ruled that Richards could testify, but only in a very limited way. She could tell about being afraid of Voyles and hiding from him.
On the day Maxwell was killed, Richards had been holed up for a month in a Lazy Mountain cabin with no running water, she said. Voyles had tracked her down three times before at different locations, so before she left Anchorage, she told people who knew him that she was leaving the state.
When McDannel asked her how Voyles reacted to her announcement that she wanted to split up, Richards was not allowed to say he threatened to kill her. She was supposed to say only that he was "angry."
Instead, Richards devised her own compromise and told jurors Voyles reacted with "extreme rage."
Richards should not have been allowed to testify at all, Van De Mark said afterward. The "extreme rage" made her testimony prejudicial to his client.
Volland agreed that Richards had gone too far, but said he'd have to think about whether the situation could be remedied.
Jurors also learned Thursday that Earl Voyles had been released from jail shortly before Maxwell's death, something they weren't supposed to know. Ritter blurted it out during her testimony.
The jury is also not allowed to know that Earl Voyles is a registered sex offender as a result of a rape conviction in Washington, that he has several misdemeanor assault and domestic violence convictions, or that he is also charged with the 1992 murder of a Spenard prostitute, a crime he was linked to when police ran his DNA through the state DNA data bank after Maxwell's death.
The trial is scheduled to resume Monday.
Daily News reporter Sheila Toomey can be reached at stoomey@adn.com.
