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Trial begins in teacher's death

Attorneys from both sides will examine whether the suffocation of Kimberly Delancey was an accident.

By COLLEEN JENKINS
Published October 26, 2005

NEW PORT RICHEY - It wasn't like Kimberly Delancey to miss work. Not calling when she was going to be out was even more unusual.

So when detectives were summoned to the 27-year-old's Carlton Arms apartment early Dec. 6, 2004, there was reason for concern. Then they learned the Anclote Elementary School teacher's front door had been unlocked. Her bedroom television was on. She was lying in bed, dressed only in jeans and a bra.

The beloved teacher and daughter was dead.

Prosecutor Mike Halkitis promised 13 jurors Tuesday that he would prove Delancey's death was no accident. Instead, he said, it was the result of a deliberate act by 34-year-old Adam Calcote, Delancey's next-door neighbor.

No one witnessed exactly what happened to Delancey the night of Dec. 4. But Halkitis and defense attorney Keith Hammond offered two different ways to consider the evidence that will be presented this week during Calcote's first-degree murder trial.

According to Halkitis, Calcote had left town when detectives started looking for him the day they found Delancey's body. He headed first to Virginia Beach, Va. then north again to Lawrence, Mass.

Along the way, the prosecutor said, Calcote told one friend that detectives were looking for him because someone had raped and murdered his neighbor.

He told another friend that he thought Delancey had wanted to have sex with him. But she started screaming rape, so he put a pillow over her face because he didn't know what to do.

Delancey died of suffocation. That meant Calcote kept the pillow over her face for three to four minutes, Halkitis said.

After authorities caught Calcote in Massachusetts, he agreed to an interview.

"Guilty minds do guilty things," he told them, according to Halkitis.

Hammond urged jurors not to be swayed by sympathy for the victim, whom neighbors had last seen drinking and talking with Calcote on a shared patio. He said his client did not intend to kill Delancey.

"It's not a whodunit," Hammond acknowledged. "Adam was involved in this. (But) do his actions amount to a crime?

"If it was an accident, he's not guilty. The fact that she died doesn't mean that a crime was committed."

Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty. If convicted, Calcote faces life in prison.

Colleen Jenkins can be reached at 727 869-6236 or cjenkins@sptimes.com

[Last modified October 26, 2005, 00:45:19]