FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Defense attorneys are now presenting their case in the Randy Tundidor murder trial. Tundidor is accused of killing Joseph Morrissey, a professor at Nova Southeastern University, who was stabbed to death by armed intruder in April of 2010.
Prosecutors contend Tundidor was angry because Morrissey, who was his landlord, was going to evict him from his rented home.
Tundidor claims his two sons killed the professor and framed him. To prove it, his defense attorneys called to the stand three Plantation detectives who searched Tundidor's home the night he was arrested and they said they found no evidence in the attic or the master bedroom.
"Like I said, I was just doing a visual search", detective Phil Tomas told jurors.
It's important, because during another search weeks later, detectives did find parts of a gun in the attic and hidden in holes in the walls. The implication is that Tundidor's youngest son Shawn planted it there. Shawn Tundidor is not charged in the case but his brother, Randy Jr., is. Last week, Randy Jr. testified against his father and gave a graphic account of how he says his dad stabbed the professor nine times.
But the most completing testimony on Monday came from so current and former inmates of the Broward County Jail who claimed Randy Jr. admitted to them that his dad is wrongly accused.
"Basically he just told me that he was the one who did the crime, killed the guy, but he was blaming his dad so he could save his little brother from getting in trouble", said former inmate John Dombark.
"He told me his father was sick, his father is going to die anyway, and he'd rather his Father die in prison than him spend the rest of his life in prison", said Thomas Kennedy, a current inmate.
The defense attorney also tried to show that Randy Sr. was physically incapable of killing someone at the time Morrissey was murdered because he was suffering from asthma and a knee injury.