The defense and the prosecution both rested their cases Tuesday morning in the murder trial of Christopher Lee. Lee is a former Twentynine Palms Marine accused of murdering his neighbor and lover, Erin Corwin, and dumping her body down a mine shaft in the desert east of Twentynine Palms two years ago. Last Thursday, Lee testified that he killed the 19-year-old woman after she allegedly admitted to molesting his young daughter. During cross-examination, Lee demonstrated on a full-size dummy how he killed Corwin: by twisting a garrote around the dummy’s neck, then spinning around quickly so that his back and the dummy’s back were touching, which caused the dummy to jerk up into the air. Lee also testified that after Corwin was dead, he dragged her body over to the mine shaft and dropped her head first into the 140-foot mine. The prosecution contends that Corwin’s murder was not a spur-of-the moment decision; Lee had Googled how to dispose of a dead body; he had scoped out mines a week before he took Erin to her death; he had the murder weapon in his Jeep; and that neither he nor his wife had contacted law enforcement after the suspected molestation of their daughter, and in fact, Lee had continued to sleep with Corwin. After closing arguments by the prosecution and defense, the members of the jury will be given their instructions this morning, and begin their deliberations.
