California v. Markhasev
"The Ennis Cosby Murder Trial"
Alibi from Markhasev mom as defense rests
July 2 (Court TV) -- The mother of the young man accused of killing Ennis Cosby says he was helping her move at the time of Cosby's murder.
Vicktoria Markhasev told jurors her son Mikail had been helping her move the family into a new apartment during the night when Cosby was shot on a roadside while changing a flat tire on his Mercedes.
But prosecutors got her to admit she had originally given police a different story -- that Mikail was headed to a party -- and she didn't see him from 8 p.m. on the night of January 15 until the next morning.
She also tried to explain away phone records showing numerous calls from her home to her son's pager, saying she suspected her son had lost his pager and was trying to find it.
Her appearance on the stand, which ended the defense case presented by public defender Henry Hall, was preceded by witness Kathleen Bias, who testified that Mikail Markhasev -- along with his friend Eli Zakaria -- were at her home in Los Alamitos the night of January 15, some 30 miles from the Bel Air crime scene.
Her account conflicted with other eyewitness accounts placing the two young men near the spot where Cosby was killed. Prosecutor Anne Ingalls was also quick to point out that Bias negotiated with a supermarket tabloid, the Globe, to sell her story.
But, said Bias, they never reached a deal and she never got any money.
"They wanted me to lie," she said.
Bias' testimony for the defense also seemed planned to help advance their theory that it was Zakaria, not Markhasev, who shot Cosby.
"He was frantic and out of control," she said, describing how he seemed upset and "weird" when he and Markhasev returned to her house on the afternoon of January 16.
At that point, she said, Markhasev looked "normal."
Closing arguments will begin July 6.
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