Myong Ki Gossel's St. Paul home was ransacked when police arrived on Jan. 4, 2017. Drawers hung open and items were scattered across the floor.
On the basement steps, retired St. Paul police officer Alta Schaffer testified Friday, investigators found a lock of gray hair. In the laundry room, Gossel, a 79-year-old widow, was found with at least 46 blows to her head and body.
Assistant Ramsey County Attorney Thomas Hatch told jurors that Kevin Reek, 47, murdered Gossel in a fit of rage when two of his co-conspirators bilked $16,000 from her and left him out of the scam.
"She was badly, brutally beaten and left to die on the basement floor …," he said in opening statements Thursday.
Reek, of Pikeville, Tenn., went on trial this week on one count each of first-degree murder with intent and second-degree murder with intent.
Reek's attorney, John Sadowski, told jurors that Reek's associates — Richard Joles and Perrin Cooper Jr. — had conspired to blame Reek. They abandoned Reek at a gas station, stole his truck and drove to Gossel's home in the 2300 block of Nokomis Avenue and "shook her down," Sadowski said in his opening statements.
Joles and Cooper are close because Joles dated Cooper's sister, Sadowksi said.
"Credibility is everything," he said, without explicitly saying that they killed Gossel.
