[tense music]
male narrator: It is incredibly rare
for criminal defendants to take the stand.
It's a risk very few take.
At stake, one's freedom or even their life.
This is Claudia Hoerig,
wife of pilot Karl Hoerig,
and she's charged with his murder.
‐ I did this. I lost my mind,
‐ She's decided to take that gamble.
Will it help her convince the jury of her innocence...
‐ He wanted to bring a maid from Brazil,
He said, "We're all gonna have sex."
narrator: Or will it come back to haunt her?
‐ I checked for his breathing.
He was dead.
narrator: Take a courtside seat with a detective,
the U. S. Marshall,
a legal analyst who watched the trial unfold,
and the victim's best friend,
I'm Dan Abrams, and this is "Under Oath."
‐ Raise your right hand.
Do you solemnly swear...
‐ I'm being honest with everything I say to you.
‐ Do you solemnly swear...
‐ The whole truth and nothing but the truth...
‐ I would like to testify.
‐ The testimony you are about to give...
The whole truth and nothing but the truth...
‐ So help you God.
♪ ♪
‐ There's always a public persona in a marriage,
and there's always a private one.
‐ He had these silent tactics with me
of not letting me sleep.
He knew what it was doing.
I didn't realize at the time that they were torture.
‐ Claudia's description about how that marriage
really was was Claudia's story to tell.
♪ ♪
narrator: Claudia Hoerig, the Brazilian‐born wife
of Karl Hoerig,
an airline pilot found shot to death
in tiny Newton Falls, Ohio.
His small‐town murder grabbed international attention
when Claudia fled the United States.
Claudia is on trial for Karl's murder,
and she's decided to take the witness stand
to explain what she says happened
and more importantly why it happened.
♪ ♪
‐ One of the most important decisions
that a lawyer has to make and the client
is whether or not they're going
to take the witness stand in their own defense.
‐ Claudia took the stand because she had 11 years
to contemplate what she was going to use
as her defense.
‐ Claudia Hoerig's defense was that she was in a sense
morally justified in pulling the trigger
because of Karl's actions against her.
♪ ♪
‐ Who was Claudia's husband, Karl Hoerig,
and what happened in their brief marriage
for it to end so tragically?
♪ ♪
‐ Karl, Claudia's husband,
his primary occupation was, he was a pilot
for Southwest Airlines,
but he was also a major in the Air Force Reserves
and a pilot at the local air force reserve base
in Youngstown.
‐ The way to describe Karl
is absolutely a caring individual,
very good‐natured, had a great sense of humor,
very easy to get along with.
♪ ♪
‐ He met someone on a dating website
that was from Brazil.
She was exotic.
‐ The next thing we know, Karl's on his way to Vegas
and getting married to Claudia,
and a lot of us were really, really surprised.
In the beginning, it seem like a good marriage
as Karl was very happy, and then two,
maybe three months into it,
there were a few different incidents.
She called his family for, like, an intervention.
‐ I wasn't strong enough by myself
to control him,
I needed help from his parents and from his family.
♪ ♪
‐ Karl and Claudia got married so quickly that he didn't
get a chance to know the real Claudia.
And I think by the time that he found that out,
he realized that he made a big mistake.
[water rushing]
‐ On March 15, 2007, a call came in to
the Newton village police department
to check the welfare of Karl Hoerig.
‐ I called the police department.
They went over to his house in Newton Falls.
It's called a welfare check.
When the Newton Falls Police Department
arrived at Karl Hoerig's residence,
they were met by his parents.
Once they got inside the residence,
they located Karl's body at the base of the steps.
‐ I was on the phone with the police officer
when his dad actually, you know,
came across Karl's body.
And I could hear his dad scream through the phone.
♪ ♪
‐ Karl Hoerig had been shot twice in the back
and once in the head.
‐ It was an obvious homicide.
They stated that they had
a person of interest right away.
The sheriff's department asked us
to immediately locate Claudia.
‐ We didn't know where she was at the time.
Further investigation led us to learning
that Claudia had returned to her home country of Brazil.
‐ We had discovered that her vehicle
was actually parked at the Pittsburgh airport,
and that was days
before Karl's body was even actually discovered.
♪ ♪
‐ Claudia drove to the Pittsburgh airport,
got on a flight using his Southwest flight privileges,
and flew to New York, from New York, flew to Brazil.
‐ Finding Claudia went relatively quickly.
The legal extradition process is what
took another 11 years before we
were finally able to get her back to the United States.
narrator: Claudia Hoerig had been indicted
on murder charges, but she was beyond the reach
of U. S. law enforcement.
She'd started a new life with a new husband in Brazil
and it literally took an international negotiation
to bring her back to the Common Pleas Court
in Trumbull County, Ohio, to tell her story.
‐ Claudia took the stand in an attempt
to convince the jury that she may have had
some reason to shoot Karl.
‐ Claudia was very much hoping
that the jury would sympathize with her.
[dramatic music]
‐ Did you plan to kill Karl Hoerig?
‐ Never, never, never for a second.
‐ 11 years had passed since pilot Karl Hoerig was found
dead of three bullet wounds in his Newton Falls, Ohio, home.
His wife, Claudia, had been tracked to Brazil,
where she'd remarried and fashioned a new life.
Finally, efforts to extradite her succeeded,
and law enforcement have her back in Trumbull County.
♪ ♪
‐ From the minute that we met her in Brazil
and she started talking to us on the airplane,
she felt that she had a story to tell.
narrator: Behind closed doors, investigators
had already heard Claudia Hoerig
describe her strange two‐year marriage
to her husband, Karl.
As the trial proceeded, Claudia
made what many consider to be a risky choice to tell
her story on the witness stand.
Would a jury sympathize with or even believe her story?
♪ ♪
‐ Karl Hoerig is dead.
Because she shot him.
Because at her moment of weakness,
30 days after she's attempted suicide,
when she wants to have a conversation with him,
he tells her, "Go ahead, kill yourself."
‐ There's only two people that know
what a relationship is really like.
And those are the two people that are
actually in the relationship.
But if, you know, it was later at night,
I had to walk around just in heels, no clothes, naked.
‐ There was emotional abuse.
There was sexual fetishes
that were requested by Karl
they thought he didn't agree with.
‐ You got pregnant.
‐ I got pregnant.
‐ Claudia says that Karl did not want her to be a mother.
When he realized that I'm
really not going to have the abortion,
he start torturing me psychologically, physically.
♪ ♪
‐ In cases where there's a history of abuse,
it's usually not difficult to find witnesses,
whether it's friends or family or
police officers or police reports.
In this case, she didn't have any of that.
So her testifying was really the only way that she had
to get that statement to the jury.
♪ ♪
‐ Late 2006, early 2007,
you tried suicide for the first time?
‐ Yes.
‐ You took all the sleeping medication you had?
‐ Yeah. The sleeping pills about almost 30.
And I went in my car, took the car, started driving.
Ten minutes max while I was conscious.
‐ Did you ended up in an accident?
‐ I fell with the car into a ditch.
narrator: According to Claudia,
her marriage to Karl had deteriorated,
and she'd reached a level of desperation.
The week of Karl's killing in March of 2007
she says she got another positive pregnancy test,
the third one in her marriage.
She confronted Karl with one last‐ditch effort
to recommit to their marriage and her pregnancy
or she says she would commit suicide in front of him
but that then things took a very different turn.
♪ ♪
‐ On the date of Karl's murder,
they got an argument when she told him
she was pregnant for the third time.
Karl wanted to take a shower
and get away from her for a little bit.
When he came back out, he was standing in
the hallway with the gun to her head.
‐ And so opens the door from the bedroom,
and you're standing there with a gun to your head?
‐ Yes. ‐ What happens next?
‐ Claudia said that was the thing that angered her
so much that she fired the shots that‐‐
that killed him.
[gunshots]
‐ I did this. I lost my mind.
I‐‐I did this.
I killed Karl.
narrator: Claudia Hoerig says she snapped,
that she hadn't planned to kill Karl.
In the heat of the moment, she killed him.
That testimony would challenge
any prosecution effort to say
she planned to kill her husband.
Claudia says that after the shooting
she tried to commit suicide, but the gun misfired.
She says she called her family in Brazil
and they encouraged her to flee.
Once in Brazil, Claudia says she lost the baby in
a miscarriage, and then she started a new life from scratch.
‐ There was no doubt that Claudia Hoerig
caused the death of her husband, Karl.
The only question is whether she was
acting under the influence of a sudden passion.
‐ On the other hand,
the prosecution wanted
to demonstrate Claudia's premeditation.
♪ ♪
‐ Before you shot Karl Hoerig,
were you upset he made you walk
around the house naked that night?
‐ Yeah. I didn't like that. ‐ All right.
Before you shot him,
were you upset he had
some weird sexual fetishes, according to you?
‐ I didn't like that.
narrator: Claudia tells a shocking story of a life
under the abusive control of her husband.
She admitted shooting him but
said it was in the heat of the moment
caused by Karl's cruelty.
‐ You can control the questions that
your attorney is going to ask you,
but you can't control the follow‐up questions
that are going to be asked by a prosecutor.
narrator: The prosecution decides to bring
a ferocious cross‐examination
to bear on Claudia and her story,
their goal to reveal Claudia's premeditation
in the killing of her husband.
♪ ♪
‐ Before you shot him,
were you upset that he picked out the clothes you wore?
‐ I didn't realize at the time that I was being‐‐
‐ Yes, or no? All I want to know is yes or no.
These are simple questions
‐ I didn't like that very much.
‐ Can Karl Hoerig came in this courtroom
and dispute or admit or deny anything you've said to
this detective or to this court yesterday?
‐ No.
narrator: The prosecution had several key facts
pointing to premeditation.
First off, before killing Karl,
Claudia wired nearly her entire bank account to Brazil.
♪ ♪
‐ We saw a lot of signs that indicated
premeditation and the fact that she
transferred money in advance.
‐ You shot Karl Hoerig
a few days after you transferred
$9,900 to Brazil, correct?
‐ Yes.
‐ So it looks like she tried to set herself up
financially for when she fled to Brazil.
narrator: The prosecution questions whether
Claudia's account of Karl's killing is believable,
saying she was pregnant again for
the third time after two miscarriages
and that Claudia told Karl she would commit suicide
if he wouldn't recommit to their marriage.
‐ You said he grabbed you and pushed you down?
‐ Yes.
‐ All right. You'd agree
the only witness and the only person who can tell us
what happened in that house on March 12th is you?
‐ Correct. ‐ All right.
♪ ♪
‐ She bought a .357 magnum with a laser.
That was really tough to explain as
an instrument that she would
choose in order to commit suicide.
‐ Karl's walking away from you; he's done talking.
‐ He's done talking. ‐ All right.
You shot Karl's Hoerig with the same gun
that you bought two days earlier?
‐ Yes. ‐ You shot Karl's Hoerig
with the same gun that you paid
$227.52 for a light laser sight
two days before, correct?
‐ Yes. ‐ You shot Karl Hoerig
with the same gun that you practiced with
for about an hour two days earlier, correct?
‐ Yes. ‐ The coroner's report
indicates two gunshot wounds to Karl's back
and then a close‐range gunshot wound
to the head, which would lead us to believe
that she shot him twice as he was going down
the steps like she said.
And then she went down to the bottom of steps,
shot him at close range in the back of the head
to make sure he was dead.
‐ You walked 1, 2, 3,
4, 5, 6, 7, 8,
9, 10 steps down to where his body was,
and you put the gun 12 to 24 inches
from his head and pulled the trigger.
[gunshots]
‐ Probably?
Well, did somebody else break into the house
and shoot him too?
narrator: The planning was hard to ignore,
wiring the money to Brazil ahead of time,
buying a gun with a laser sight,
practicing at a shooting range.
Claudia said that was all
just a premeditated suicide she was planning,
but had her intended suicide becomes something else?
Had Claudia suddenly snapped, killing Karl in
the heat of the moment instead of herself?
‐ If Claudia could've convinced the jury
that she killed Karl with good reason,
it may convince the jury to either reduce
the charge or give her a lesser sentence.
[light music]
narrator: Claudia tells the jury her first hope was
to continue her marriage and raise their child.
Her contingency plan, to commit suicide.
But her final conversation with Karl, she says,
caused her to spiral into a fury, and she says she
killed him with a weapon that she
intended to use on herself.
‐ Claudia's defense team used her story to try to convince
the jury that both emotional and physical abuse by Karl
led to her shooting him.
‐ He knocks her down.
She says, "I want to talk."
He says words to the effect of,
"Killing yourself is a good idea.
"Wait for me to leave.
"Do it in the basement so you don't get blood
on my painting."
At that point, she loses it.
♪ ♪
‐ Upon hearing those words,
everything boiled over, and Claudia couldn't help herself.
And according to the defense,
no reasonable person given all those facts
could have helped themselves.
‐ She thought that if she told enough stories
and put enough detail out about all of these allegations
of the emotional abuse,
the physical abuse, the sexual abuse
that she could gain
the sympathy of the public and the jury.
Narrator: The question for the jury is not
if she fired the shots, but why?
Claudia has made a case only she could make.
No other witnesses testified to the state of her marriage.
Will the jury relate to
the duress she said she suffered?
Could they walk in her shoes?
Will that lead to a conviction on a lesser charge
or a shorter sentence?
♪ ♪
This case has been proven to you
beyond all reasonable doubt
that she committed the crime as charged.
‐ Claudia was trying to make Karl out to be a monster.
On the other hand, nobody that we talked to
anywhere could support any of
the things that Claudia was saying about him
whether it was ex‐wives,
former girlfriends, family members.
She was the only person saying anything different.
‐ Please rise.
‐ Buying the murder weapon ahead of time,
taking money out, fleeing all the way to Brazil,
the number of shots, the location of the shots
all according to prosecutors
meant that she did this killing with premeditation.
‐ Remain standing for the jury.
‐ You never know what a jury's going to think.
It's quite possible that you end up with a juror who
maybe feels some compassion for Claudia,
because maybe they've experienced some of
the same things that she described
while she was on the stand.
‐ We the jury in this case
duly impaneled and sworn our firm find the defendant,
Claudia C. Hoerig, guilty of aggravated murder
♪ ♪
‐ To finally be able to bring Claudia
back to Trumbull County, Ohio, to face trial for this
and then get a successful verdict of guilty
was very important to all of us who worked
this case to bring some closure to the Hoerig family.
‐ My biggest takeaway from this
is she didn't have to kill him.
She could have transferred
that money and driven to the airport
and flown to Brazil
and had her $10,000 and
just lived the rest of her life there.
It was just completely senseless.
narrator: Taking the stand was a gamble that did
not help Claudia Hoerig's legal case.
She told her version of her marriage to the jury,
but she was held accountable for a
premeditated killing with a firearm.
‐ You know, there's certain friendships you make in
life that are irreplaceable.
So even though he's gone, he's not forgotten.
I wanted her to spend the rest of her life in jail.
narrator: Her sentence, life
with at least an opportunity for
parole after 28 years.
Parole was a condition for
Claudia Hoerig's extradition from Brazil.
Defendants are never forced to take the stand,
but that decision is likely
the biggest one they ever make.
For "Under Oath," I'm Dan Abrams.