Opening statements heard in murder trial

January 20, 2006

MARY AMES\Frontiersman reporter

PALMER - Lawyers for the prosecution and defense delivered opening statements Wednesday in the Palmer Superior Court trial of a Big Lake woman accused of planning the shotgun murder of her cousin, stealing drugs from the dead man's floor safe and setting fire to his house to destroy evidence in November 2003.

Cynthia Estes, 45, faces charges of first and second-degree murder, first-degree arson, first-degree burglary, second-degree theft and tampering with physical evidence in the November 2003 death of David McKinney, who was 49 when he was killed.

Estes and her husband, Richard &#8220Bart” Deremer, 34, lived near McKinney, and Estes worked as his housekeeper, according to court testimony. Deremer was tried and convicted in November on the same charges lodged against Estes now.

The slain man's father took the stand Wednesday afternoon.

Herbert McKinney, father of David McKinney, said he and his wife live in Anchorage, and are raising David's daughter, who was about 8 years old when her father was murdered.

&#8220He was a good carver,” McKinney said. &#8220He found out he had hepatitis C in 1996, and the doctor said he would live maybe 10 years. It was bad. He knew he was dying and he had a vision of building a house, leaving his daughter something. He lived in a trailer next to us for three years and moved out to Big Lake in July 2003.”

A week before the killing, David McKinney called his father and asked him to come out and stay for a few days, according to Herbert McKinney's testimony. The call was made within an hour or two of an incident between his son and Deremer, he testified, an incident that ended with Deremer chasing him away with a baseball bat.

&#8220He called to tell me he had been having some trouble with Cindy,” McKinney testified. &#8220'Cindy and them.' Some of his pills were missing, so he left some out when Cindy came over and, sure enough, she took them. He went to confront them. He said he wanted me to come out because he had been threatened.”

The last time he spoke with his son was about 9 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 22, McKinney testified, when David told him he found &#8220a good little church out there and he was playing music there.”

On Sunday, several phone calls to David McKinney went unanswered, he said. About 4:30 a.m. Monday, he received a call from Joan Estes, Cynthia's mother, telling him his son was dead, he said.

&#8220Don't expect much dispute about the murder, the fire and that Richard Deremer was the murderer,” Palmer Assistant District Attorney Suzanne Powell said in her opening statement earlier this week. &#8220But pay attention to what the defendant knew and intended. She had said, ‘It was him or us' and was the person with inside information. She knew he filled his prescriptions less than a week before the murder. She knew and she helped. She admitted to driving Deremer there with borrowed shotgun and ammunition. The defendant is guilty of being an accomplice to first-degree murder.”

Anchorage defense attorney Rex Butler told the jury, in his opening statement, that the evidence would show Estes had no reason to lie when she was recorded in a phone conversation saying that she knew Deremer went to confront McKinney, but Deremer never showed her what was in the duffel bag he carried with him as Estes drove him to McKinney's home.

&#8220She didn't know exactly what her husband was going to do,” Butler said. &#8220But at the corner of Hollywood, she heard a pop and she went home because she didn't want to be part of it. They used a radio to call because cell phone service wasn't so good out there. When Cindy went to the scene of the fire, in an attempt to protect her husband, she said nothing.”

Almost a year later, during a recorded phone conversation with Deremer's cousin, Estes admitted her husband murdered McKinney, admitted she drove him to McKinney's house with a borrowed shotgun and ammunition in a blue duffel bag and admitted Deremer called her on a walkie-talkie radio to come pick him up, Powell said in her opening statement.

&#8220And while he [McKinney] lay murdered, she walked to the floor safe,” Powell said. &#8220She admitted she knew that he kept the safe combination in his wallet, she got the wallet out of his jacket, but couldn't read the combination on the paper. And they went out and got a cutting disk and Deremer went back to cut the safe open.”

Powell told the jury that during different interviews, Estes said she didn't know her husband was going to kill McKinney, that later she said she didn't even know McKinney was dead until after she had picked up Deremer from McKinney's house and they had returned home, and that even later, Estes said, &#8220I knew he was going over to kill him.” The Valium, morphine and hydrocodone McKinney kept in the safe were missing and when questioned about them, Estes said, &#8220We did them,” Powell said in her opening statement.

Estes changed her statements once troopers arrested her and told her things go better in court for people who cooperate, according to Butler. She had no reason to fabricate anything, and believed the troopers when they told her things would go better for her if she cooperated with their investigation, Butler said. Then she found out her bail was set at the same amount as Deremer's, $600,000, he said.

&#8220She called troopers and asked why she had the same bail,” Butler said. &#8220She protected her husband until she said, ‘I got to get home to the children. My children need me' and she called the troopers many times to cooperate. That's why we're here.”

The trial is expected to last at least two weeks. Estes has been free since Sept. 23, 2004, when Palmer District Judge William Estelle allowed Estes to post a $25,000 cash bond.

Contact Mary Ames at

352-2284 or mary.ames@

frontiersman.com.