Defense attacks key evidence at Longo trial.

Byline: Bill Bishop The Register-Guard

NEWPORT - Mystery still surrounds Christian Michael Longo's version of the deaths of two of his children, even after defense lawyers opened their case Tuesday in Longo's aggravated murder trial.

Defense lawyer Steve Krasik spent less than a minute in an opening statement to jurors in which he simply said the defense evidence would speak for itself and needed no explanation or outline.

But the defense strategy - to broadly sow seeds of doubt in hopes of preventing the unanimous jury verdict required to convict Longo for the two murders - quickly emerged.

In questioning two detectives in the case, Longo defense lawyers Ken Hadley and Krasik attacked two key pieces of evidence - Longo's admissions to detectives and the account of an eyewitness who saw a man similar to Longo parked in a van on a bridge over the slough where the bodies of Zachery and Sadie Longo were later discovered.

Longo, 29, maintains innocence in their deaths, but has pleaded guilty and faces a potential death sentence for murdering his wife, MaryJane, 34, and youngest daughter, Madison, 2.

Prosecutors contend Longo sought to rid himself of a wife he no longer loved and children he could not support in order to live as a footloose bachelor.

In prosecutors' version of the crimes, Longo murdered his family after returning home from a late shift at his job. He then packed the bodies of MaryJane and Madison into suitcases that he submerged along the waterfront dock at The Landing in Newport. They contend he dropped the weighted bodies of Zachery, 4, and Sadie, 3, off the bridge over Lint Slough at Waldport.

He then fled to tourist camps in Mexico, where he had a sexual relationship with a German woman, according to evidence presented during seven days of trial by 49 prosecution witnesses.

One of them, FBI Special Agent Daniel Clegg, said Longo "openly admitted" killing his family during a conversation while Clegg escorted Longo back to the United States, and again after Clegg turned Longo over to Oregon investigators.

Calling former Oregon State Police Detective Roy Brown as the first defense witness, Hadley sought to undercut Clegg's testimony by asking Brown whether he ever heard Longo make such an admission when Brown took custody of Longo from Clegg.

"During that particular interview, I did not," Brown said. "He did not deny it, either."

In cross examination by prosecutor Steven Briggs, Brown said Clegg introduced Longo by saying Longo had admitted the killings. Brown said Longo told them he could describe how he killed the family, "but it probably would take some time," Brown testified.

With the second defense witness, Krasik attacked the testimony of Alsea Valley carpenter Dick Hoch, the eyewitness on the Lint Slough bridge.

Krasik asked Lincoln County Sheriff's Detective Steve Schabert how Hoch first described the man he saw in the parked van and what the lighting conditions were during the 4:30 a.m. encounter. Krasik had taken Hoch to task in cross examination with questions about his ability to clearly see the van's driver in the faint glow of dashboard lights.

Krasik also questioned why detectives only showed Hoch a single photo of Longo and not a half-dozen other similar photos typically presented to eyewitnesses in a suspect line-up.

"It didn't exactly happen that way," Schabert replied. He said Hoch walked into his office, saw an FBI wanted poster of Longo on a bulletin board and said the poster photo appeared very similar - except the van driver had a fuller face.

Longo sat quietly during most of the day. He shed tears in the morning session, as prosecutors played the last portion of a four-hour tape recorded interview he gave detectives.

Toward the end, Longo could be heard crying on the tape as he told detectives, "I guess I would just want to reiterate how much my family meant to me. ... I just love my family."

The defense case may conclude on Monday.