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Updated Oct. 30, 2007, 12:23 p.m. ET
Mack wrote 'end problem' list of things to do the day his wife was killed, expert testifies


Prosecutors say Darren Mack wrote a list of what he needed to do the day he killed his wife.
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LAS VEGAS — A police handwriting expert testified Monday that Darren Mack is the author of the so-called "to-do" list found on his kitchen table after he killed his estranged wife and shot the judge presiding over their divorce.

The list scrawled on a legal pad includes among its bullet points "end problem," which prosecutors contend was the wealthy Reno man's code for stabbing his wife, Charla, to death in his garage June 12, 2006.

Jimmy Smith, a document examiner for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, said he had compared the list to 18 pages of Mack's writing and found their styles of block capital letters identical.

"That document was written by Darren Mack," Smith testified.

Lawyers for Mack, 46, told jurors in opening statements that Mack wrote the list after he had killed his 39-year-old wife in self-defense in an effort to make sense of what had happened.

The list also includes "parking garage — if yes," which prosecutors say was a reference to his plan to shoot into Washoe County Family Court Judge Chuck Weller's chambers from a sniper perch in a nearby parking garage.

The list also includes taking the Macks' 7-year-old daughter to her grandmother's house and closing the door of his garage. A friend testified last week that Mack asked him the night before the incidents to drive the girl to her grandmother's house the next morning. The man also said the garage door was open when Charla Mack and the defendant began talking and closed moments later, when he began to suspect she had come to some harm.

Smith was the last in a string of seven witnesses to offer forensic testimony Monday. Much of the scientific work they outlined was designed to prove what the defense now concedes — that Mack killed his wife and shot Weller.

He has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity in Weller's shooting, which occurred about two hours after the death of Charla Mack.

Scientists in the county crime laboratory began their work immediately after the events, long before Mack, who had fled to Mexico, entered his pleas.

The witnesses showed jurors dozens of photos detailing how they had carefully collected and catalogued a host of blood-stained items from the scene of Charla Mack's death and the judge's shooting.

DNA tests conclusively matched the blood in Darren Mack's house to his dead wife and fingerprint exams showed at least one bloody fingerprint to belong to the defendant.

If the results the witnesses described were not shocking, many of the photos displayed for jurors were. One shot showed Charla Mack's arm, darkened with blood, stretching across the garage floor toward one of her neon-yellow-and-aqua sandals.

Another photo showed the judge's wire-rimmed eyeglasses, one lens coated in blood. Weller suffered a gunshot to his chest. He recovered from his injuries.

Las Vegas police handwriting expert Jimmy Smith testified that Darren Mack wrote the 'to-do' list.
Las Vegas police handwriting expert Jimmy Smith testified that Darren Mack wrote the 'to-do' list.

Among the items collected by investigators was Charla Mack's blood-soaked T-shirt. A Washoe County Sheriff's Department forensic investigator pointed out a knife hole near the neck of the shirt. Charla Mack suffered six or seven knife wounds, the fatal blow piercing an artery in her upper chest.

After the witness, Lisa Harris, repeatedly referred to the clothing and the sandals as belonging to the "victim," a lawyer for Mack strenuously objected to the term.

"Were you in the garage, ma'am?" Scott Freeman snapped.

Mack maintains that during an argument about a proposed million-dollar divorce settlement, his wife pointed a gun at him and pulled the trigger. The gun misfired and he killed her while she was attempting to fire again, he contends.

The prosecution, which is seeking murder and attempted murder charges, contends Mack killed his wife because he did not want to pay the settlement.

In the often dry scientific testimony, both sides looked for small pieces of evidence to advance their cases. Prosecutors noted that there were blood stains on a lock leading from the garage to the interior of Mack's house, where the couple's daughter waited with the family friend, perhaps suggesting that he had locked his wife in the garage before stabbing her.

The defense zeroed in on copies of two checks totaling $800 found in Charla Mack's Lexus SUV. The checks were drawn on her husband's account and one was marked "alimony" and another "child support." A defense lawyer suggested they were proof the defendant was regularly paying his wife what he owed.



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