“There was no bad blood between Tom and Gil,” Shargel told the jury. “None whatsoever.” Adding that Linda Kolman and Nunez’s relationship “was about love, not violence, it’s about admiration, not poisoning.”
Shargel saved his sharpest attack for the medical determination that Kolman had died of acute Midazolam poisoning. Shargel told jurors that while toxicology reports showed the drug, as well as the antidepressant Zoloft and prescription pain medication in Kolman’s system, none were present in large enough doses to kill him. Shargel added that state medical examiner Dr. Michael Sikirica arrived at the Midazolam poisoning theory only after nine months, three autopsies and two court-ordered exhumation’s of Kolman’s body. Before arriving at his conclusion, Sikirica and other physicians had noted a number of other possible explanations for Kolman’s death, including heart arrhythmia, sleep apnea, an enlarged heart and, at one point, strangulation. Shargel went on to note that later forensic reports make no mention of strangulation as a cause of death, nor is there any medical evidence that Kolman was choked to death.
Shargel said that in a footnote to a 2015 autopsy report, Sikirica himself notes the other potential factors in Kolman’s death. “The truth is, this all amounts to a guess,” said Shargel. “They’re still guessing as to what might have caused the death of Thomas Kolman.”
Shargel also took issue with the prosecution’s theory that Nunez parked next to Kolman and got into his car the morning of his death. Shargel told the jury that the prosecution’s own vehicle identification expert would testify that the Kohl’s video does not show details of the car. Nor, he said, would the video show if the driver was male or female or if they ever left the car. DNA and fingerprint evidence, meanwhile, shows no trace of Nunez in Kolman’s vehicle.
“We may never know what Thomas Kolman died from, we don’t always know,” Shargel told the jury. “But whatever happened to Thomas Kolman, Gilberto Nunez had nothing to do with it.”
Shargel has Thomas Kolman testifying for the Imagination:”Well he steals my wife, but bro, I was gradually accepting it. in fact I not only accepted it but encouraged it. So why he gave me that drug I’ll never know in all of eternity. I had no teeth to pull or anything. Oh that’s right, I did read about ‘eugenics’ and all that, but that was nothing that could recur in any way. Love ya, killer- bro.” Yeah……… rrrrright.
Why did the mall cops investigate this case? Why not the BCI? If their case was based on premeditation, what was he not charged with murder one?