Drug transaction at heart of prosecution

The attorney says greed and addiction led a woman to plan an attack on her supplier, who was choked to death in 2003.

By ALEX LEARY
Published July 21, 2004

NEW PORT RICHEY - For a moment, she sounded relieved.

"Hi, I made it," Jolene Elkin said over the phone, speaking from Chicago to her best friend in New Port Richey.

Elkin was unaware Vivian Cammarata was at the Pasco Sheriff's Office, and the conversation was being recorded for the investigation into the death of a 67-year-old Port Richey woman.

"This is a homicide. They will take you to the end of the earth," Cammarata warned.

"I know that, Vivian. I'm not going to stay at my dad's."

But Elkin, 33, never made it to her next destination in Indiana. Detectives arrived at her father's house May 22, 2003, and placed her under arrest in connection with the slaying of Josephine Nuvolone two days earlier.

Authorities already had arrested Elkin's son, David, and his friend, Gary Lee Farrington, who allegedly put Nuvolone in a choke hold as they restrained her in her condominium.

On Tuesday, Jolene Elkin's case went to trial, and the phone conversations she had in the frantic hours after fleeing Florida played prominently. As their words, punctuated often with profanity, were replayed for the jury, Cammarata and Elkin sat with bowed heads.

"This is rock bottom, babe," Cammarata said at one point.

This morning, the jury will return for instructions from Circuit Judge Michael Andrews and then begin deliberations.

Prosecutor Mike Halkitis is pressing for first-degree murder, punishable by life in prison. Elkin's attorney, John Swisher, wants the jury to find her guilty of a far lesser charge: third-degree murder, punishable by 15 years.

Elkin's troubles began long before May 19, 2003, with her addiction to prescription drugs. On the day Nuvolone was strangled, Elkin met up with the older woman to obtain the painkiller Dilaudid. But Nuvolone, who worked for the county's permit department, gave her only a half-pill.

The case hinges on that transaction.

Halkitis asserted that Elkin wanted to punish Nuvolone for not giving her more drugs and masterminded a plan to rob Nuvolone of pills and money that afternoon. Elkin enlisted her 16-year-old son and 19-year-old Farrington to help her, Halkitis told the jury. "She knew they were going to rough her up."

The teens, to use Elkin's words on the tape, "bum rushed" Nuvolone after she opened the door of her home. Nuvolone fell to the green carpet so hard that her dentures fell out. One of her earrings was ripped out. Though Elkin did not touch Nuvolone, she was still responsible for the slaying, Halkitis argued.

"If you run with the pack, you share in the kill," he said, quoting the author Jack London. He was explaining the legal basis in Florida for which all parties in a felony crime can be charged.

Halkitis said Elkin quickly left the apartment because Nuvolone was dead. "They got scared off," Halkitis said.

Defense attorney Swisher had an entirely different take on what occurred. Elkin was not trying to harm Nuvolone when she and the teens arrived at her home, he said. Rather, she was a drug addict simply trying to get her fix, and had only been given a half-pill.

"She went over there because she was hooked, and she needed more," Swisher said. He characterized the incident not as a robbery or burglarly but a theft. There was no evidence of forced entry, he said, and Nuvolone freely let the elder Elkin inside. The teenagers, he said, were simply to act as a diversion while Elkin went in to search of drugs and money. When Elkin left the house, Swisher said, she believed Nuvolone was still alive.

A witness said the teenagers left only moments after Elkin. They had a backpack with two handguns taken from inside the home, along with a telephone. They returned to Elkin's house, where she handed out some of the pills she took. The guns were given to a man in exchange for more drugs.

Last week, David Elkin pleaded guilty to second-degree murder as part of a deal with prosecutors and was sentenced to 25 years. Farrington's trial has not been set.

[Last modified July 20, 2004, 23:14:16]