Edward Ates – Accused murderer Edward Ates claimed he couldn’t have killed his son-in-law because, at 5′ 8″ and 285 pounds he is too fat to kill.
Edward Ates allegedly shot estranged son-in-law Paul Duncsak seven times in the head and groin after hiding in the victim’s home and opening fire from the bottom of the basement stairs when he got home from work.
Ate’s defense is claiming he was “too fat to kill” because the trajectory of the bullets fired by the killer means he would have had to run up the basement stairs as he shot Duncsak in the ground-floor hallway.
Duncsak’s fiance testified she was on the phone with Duncsak when he was killed.
“Suddenly he started screaming, ‘Oh, oh, no, no, no’,” Lori Adamo said, recounting the last seconds of her conversation with Paul Duncsak on Aug. 23, 2006. “Then I heard [Paul’s parrot] screeching. … Then I heard a thud.”
Duncsak was wearing a gold Rolex watch when police found his body. The $318 in his wallet was untouched, and no part of the house was ransacked.
Police say that the shooter must have used a silencer and when computer experts investigated Edward Ates’ computer, they found that he had done research on how to make a silencer.
Ates also did research on .22-caliber guns and on how to pick locks, a police detective testified, and he even visited a Web site on “How to commit the perfect murder.”
Paul Duncsak had refused to give his then father-in-law $250,000 back in 2003 to save his failing golf course in Florida.
At the time of the killing, Duncsak and Ates’ daughter, Stacey, were involved in a bitter custody dispute after their 2005 divorce.
Police quickly zeroed in on Ates and tracked him down at his mother’s home in Louisiana. His sister testified that Ates asked her to lie about arriving there the day before the murder took place.
And that’s the latest news on the unusual murder defense of being too fat to kill being used by Edward Ates.
Tags: edward ates, murder, paul duncsak, too fat to kill