SLEEPWALKING MURDER TRIAL
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PHOENIX (Court TV) — Unable to recall his brutal killing of his wife, Scott Falater said Thursday he could not explain why he put on gloves before dumping the stabbed body of his spouse in their pool. Fighting back tears, Falater said he was tormented by his actions.

"Remorse is a weak description for what I feel," Falater testified. "Something must have gone crazy in my head ... My reaction was that I guess my brain had broken somehow. Maybe there's a tumor in my head or something really happened in my head."

Falater is on trial and could face the death penalty for allegedly murdering his wife, Yarmila, on January 16, 1997. Falater stabbed his wife 44 times at their home, dragged her into their pool and then held her head under water.

The defense does not deny that Falater killed his wife, but insists that he did not commit murder because he was sleepwalking at the time, and therefore lacked the intent to kill. Yarmila, the defense believes, was killed when she tried to awaken a sleepwalking Falater while he was trying to fix a pool water pump with a hunting knife.

However, prosecutors doubt the sleepwalking theory and claim that Falater's actions — such as changing his bloody clothes and placing them in the trunk of his car — suggest that he was not sleepwalking at all during the attack. They insist Falater's fatal attack on his wife was premeditated.

In his second day of testimony, Falater told his attorney Michael Kimmerer during direct examination that he did not remember the attack. He only remembered failing to fix the pool's water pump before deciding to go to bed. Yarmila, Falater said, had dozed off on their living room couch and he kissed her goodnight before going upstairs. Falater maintained that he never considered murdering his wife.

"No way," Falater said. "That was the furthest thing from my mind."

The next thing Falater said he remembered was waking up and hearing dogs barking and people shouting in his backyard. Falater said he went downstairs, where he was confronted by police — he did not realize right away that he was the prime suspect in his wife's death.

"It slowly dawned on me that 'Yarm' is hurt, really hurt, and I'm the guy they think did it because I'm the guy sitting in the car with the handcuffs," Falater said.

But during cross-examination. prosecutor Juan Martinez focused on Falater's use of gloves during the attack. Falater said he could not remember where the gloves were on the night of the attack and indicated they may have been in a pile in his garage. Suggesting that Falater was awake during the incident, Martinez then pointed out that the defendant would have had to pick out the matching gloves before dragging Yarmila's body to the backyard and dumping her in the pool.

Martinez also confronted Falater over his removal of his bloody Mormon undergarments after the killing. The defense has suggested that Falater was following a familiar pattern when he removed his clothes. Experts have claimed that sleepwalkers often do routine tasks and the defense has suggested that Falater was removing work clothes while he was sleepwalking because he thought he was finished fixing the water pump.

But under cross-examination, Falater conceded that most Mormons do not remove their garments unless they are about to bathe or the garments are dirty. Martinez also had Falater concede that it would have been unusual for him to remove his undergarments in his garage.

With those concessions, Martinez suggested that Falater must have been conscious of his actions when he killed his wife. The prosecution believes Falater stashed the bloody clothes in his car and concocted his sleepwalking story to cover-up the allegedly premeditated murder.

Falater's cross-examination was scheduled to continue Friday.

— Bryan Robinson