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RIVERHEAD, N.Y. (AP) — An electrician charged with beating his girlfriend's millionaire husband to death took the witness stand for 90 seconds Tuesday, repeatedly denying any role in the slaying.
Daniel Pelosi answered a half-dozen questions from his attorney in asserting his innocence in the October 2001 slaying of Theodore Ammon.
"Did you murder Ted Ammon?" asked Gerald Shargel, a lawyer who once represented the late mobster John Gotti.
"Absolutely not," replied Pelosi, 41. He gave the two-word denial six times.
A prosecutor will begin cross-examination Wednesday; the case may go to the jury this week.
"The key witness said pretty much nothing," Assistant District Attorney Janet Albertson said. "Nobody here expects to hear the murderer say, 'I did it.'"
Ammon, 52, the head of Chancery Lane Capital and chairman of Jazz at Lincoln Center, was bludgeoned to death in the bedroom of his Long Island mansion. An autopsy found he was struck more than 30 times in the head and had broken bones throughout his body.
Pelosi, who has been held without bail since March on a second-degree murder charge, says he was at his sister's house, 40 miles away, when the slaying occurred.
Prosecutors assert Pelosi killed Ammon because he was upset over his girlfriend's share of a pending divorce settlement that would have given her less than $25 million.
Pelosi and Generosa Ammon were married three months after the slaying, and split up in 2003; she died months later of cancer. Pelosi received $2 million in a postnuptial agreement before she died, but got nothing in her will. | 
