Jury delivers verdict in stabbing death of Mark Kruger

A Lancaster County jury began deliberating Tuesday to determine whether a Lincoln man's fatal shooting of his father during a family gathering last year was first-degree murder, self-defense or something else .

Jurors worked until 10 p.m. before finding Joseph Kruger guilty of first-degree murder and use of a deadly weapon to commit a felony.

The affair divides a family in two.

With Kruger, the son tried for having killed the father who had raised him on one side, with his mother and his aunt.

Kruger's sister, Ashley Kruger, and her partner on the other.

Lancaster County Assistant Public Defender Shawn Elliott called what led to the death of Mark Kruger at the home of Ashley Kruger on May 7, 2023, a confusing situation.

“It’s a terrible thing that happened, but that doesn’t mean you’re guilty,” he said during his closing argument.

Over the past week, the jury has heard testimony from Joseph Kruger and a half-dozen others when it happened, including his uncle who has since died of cancer, his testimony was given under oath at a hearing last year and played to the jury.

All agreed that it was Joseph's father, Mark Kruger, who started it. But nothing else matched, from exactly where it happened to the details of the fight that led up to it.

Witnesses on one side described Mark Kruger, 59, as relentlessly attacking his son, who was unable to stand well after losing his big toe six months earlier to amputation.

On the other side, witnesses said that although Mark had started, Joseph, then 40, quickly took over and would not give up, at one point holding his father against a fence with his hands around him. by the neck.

Before Kenny Bornemeier, Ashley's significant other, broke them up, he and Ashley both said they heard Joseph say he was going to kill Mark, just before they went to a picnic table, to take a steak knife and turning around to stab Mark.

Afterwards, they say, they heard him say: “I told you so.”

But there was no record of them telling police the crucial words – which led to the first-degree murder charge against him – until a week later, and they were the only ones who heard them , a point emphasized by Elliott in his closing arguments Tuesday.

Joseph Kruger denied saying it and stated throughout his conversation that he begged his father to stop, then said “I told you to stop.” He claims to have picked up the knife to try to make him stop.

Elliott said that even though Ashley Kruger claimed to have protected her brother at first by not telling, Bornemeier had no reason to leave him out. He had seen Mark as a father figure and a good friend, and in his statement to police he had called Joseph “shit.”

“You know why he didn't say it? Because it didn't happen,” Elliott told the jury.

He pointed to the testimony of defense witnesses and the bruises on Mark's knuckles and forearms as evidence that Mark had been the sole aggressor and that he had continued to pursue Joseph Kruger. Why else would he have taken the knife, he asked. He loved his father.

“He was being attacked and beaten by him. He felt like he had to fight back. Maybe that would stop him,” Elliott said.

On the other hand, Lancaster County Deputy Prosecutor Eric Miller said the defense was trying to make Mark Kruger look like a “monster.”

“Because if they do this and you accept it, then you will have to acquit it because it was just an accident,” he said. “It wasn't an accident. It's not self-defense.”

Miller said the defense witnesses were siblings who all covered for Joseph Kruger.

“And they had this stupid idea that it was an accident and that Mark Kruger fell on the knife or bumped into the knife,” he said.

As for Ashley Kruger, Miller said she loved her father and brother and found herself in the worst situation.

“Now, does she want her brother to take some responsibility for all of this? Yes, I suspect that's the case,” he said. “Sometimes loyalty ends when the person to whom it is loyal takes no responsibility for what they have done.”

Ultimately, Miller pointed to photos of Joseph Kruger taken at the police station after the incident, showing a knot on his left temple but nothing else, saying you couldn't even tell he had been hit by someone. counts more than a dozen times.

“It was not a fight to the death,” he said, calling the use of deadly force “absurdity.”

“It was not an accident. It was first-degree murder,” Miller said.

The jury deliberated the case around 11 a.m. and returned its verdict around 10 p.m.