Witness in Westside man's murder trail testifies she heard a man's voice pleading - San Jose Mercury News
Stewart Skuba in court last month.
SANTA CRUZ - A key witness took the stand in the Stewart Skuba homicide trial Tuesday, relating hearing crashing sounds and a man pleading with others to stop on the night prosecutors say a man was killed in a Santa Cruz garage.
Kristin Roberts, 21, was living at Stewart Skuba's Felix Street home on July 20, 2009 when prosecutors maintain Skuba killed Elias Sorokin, a 29-year-old from Los Angeles. Roberts cried several times on the witness stand, struggling to maintain her composure as she detailed cleaning up blood from the garage that night. She sobbed when shown a photograph of Sorokin's identification card, testifying that she'd seen the same card when she looked through a wallet she found in Skuba's bedroom.
Skuba, 33, a former Westside hair stylist, is charged with murder, robbery and kidnapping in the disappearance of Sorokin. Sorokin's body has never been found, but his burned truck was discovered in the Santa Cruz Mountains several days after his reported disappearance.
Prosecutor Rob Wade contends Sorokin came to Skuba's home to sell him marijuana, and that Skuba tried to rob him by knocking him out with chloroform. The plot failed and Skuba beat him unconscious and dumped his body off a cliff, with the assistance of another man, Kenneth Clamp, Wade said.
Clamp was found guilty of murder and robbery in August, while another man accused of being an accomplice, Adam Hunt, was acquitted of murder charges but convicted of robbery.
Roberts testified Tuesday that she'd been drinking all day July 20, but was not drunk. Roberts has admitted she drank heavily for a few years and frequently used methamphetamine. Though she and Skuba had previously dated, they were just friends at the time and her brother and father also were staying at the house.
Roberts recalled Skuba telling her a man from Los Angeles was coming to the house that day and that he planned to "jack him for his weed." She testified that Skuba, accompanied by Hunt, told her to go upstairs and she later heard a commotion downstairs.
She said she heard a male voice say, "Please don't," and "Stop." It upset her, and she turned up the television's volume, she said. She also testified that her father tried to call 911 but she'd told him not to because she didn't want Skuba to get in trouble.
Roberts testified that Skuba came upstairs a short while later, appearing "freaked out and kind of sweating," carrying the clothes he had been wearing. She said she heard him start the washing machine, and that he told her not to go into the garage because the chloroform didn't work and "he's knocked out."
Clamp later told her to clean up the blood, she testified, and she detailed using an old T-shirt and towels to clean droplets of blood from the bathroom and the garage.
Roberts previously pleaded guilty to trying to use Sorokin's credit cards and is pending sentencing for robbery.
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