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Trial opens for defendant in hit-run case
By CARY DAVIS © St. Petersburg Times, published October 18, 2000 NEW PORT RICHEY -- The night investigators found 83-year-old Irene Montak's body on the side of a residential Port Richey street in 1997, the lack of evidence suggested this would probably be another unsolved fatal hit-and-run. All investigators had at the time were vague witness descriptions of a compact car that was seen speeding away after Montak was struck and killed on her nightly walk around the quiet Gulf Highlands neighborhood. But then they got an anonymous tip that led them to the garage of a Port Richey house, where they found a dismantled red Geo Metro splattered with blood. In the bathroom of the garage they found the car's hood, and nearby they discovered an industrial vacuum cleaner filled with fragments of a broken windshield. On Tuesday, the three-year anniversary of the crash, the case that eventually took investigators to Wisconsin in their search for the suspect unfolded in front of a jury in a Pasco courtroom. Marshall John Ellgas, 37, is on trial this week on charges of vehicular homicide and leaving the scene of a crash involving death. Prosecutors say Ellgas had been drinking beer, and possibly smoking marijuana, in the hours before he climbed behind the wheel of his girlfriend's Geo on Oct. 17, 1997, and headed to a local bar for a night of karaoke. It was still daylight, prosecutors said, when he hit Montak as she was walking across Zimmerman Road. Instead of stopping, prosecutors said, he drove quickly back to his girlfriend's house on Hillcrest Avenue and began taking apart the car. "Nobody stops, nobody calls and nobody turns himself in," said Assistant State Attorney Richard Mensch. "Nobody knows who done it." Three days later, Ellgas was in Wisconsin, where he was soon jailed for violating his probation on a 1994 aggravated battery conviction by leaving that state and moving to Florida. Investigators linked Ellgas to the fatal crash after his girlfriend, Irene Molampy, told a Florida Highway Patrol trooper she was in the car with her boyfriend when the wreck happened. Tests later revealed that Ellgas' palm print was on the car hood hidden in Molampy's garage. Ellgas moved into Molampy's house about two weeks before the crash. Molampy's statement is the strongest evidence prosecutors have in the case, but defense attorney Phil Cohen told jurors that there are major credibility problems with her account. Cohen said Molampy offered information about the crash only after she was picked up days later for drunken driving and struck a deal with investigators to cooperate if they dropped the charge against her. He also pointed to differing statements Molampy has made in the past three years in suggesting to jurors that nothing she has said can be believed. "Her credibility is going to be an issue," Cohen said. Molampy took the stand Tuesday afternoon and said she told Ellgas not to drive the Geo on the night of the crash because he had been drinking and the car had no tag and was not insured. "But he wanted to party on," she said. "He said he had everything under control." They were on their way to the Overtime Sports Bar on State Road 52, she said, when "all of a sudden, there was a whack. Something hit the car, or he hit something. . . . He didn't stop until he got to the garage." But Cohen, on cross-examination, pointed out that Molampy had told him at a deposition that she was not in the car with Ellgas. "You characterized your involvement as not being in the car and not knowing anything about this, right?" Cohen asked. "Right," Molampy replied. Several days after the crash, Molampy testified, she told Ellgas to turn himself in. He reacted, she said, by grabbing her neck and threatening her. Molampy said she didn't see Ellgas again until she walked into the courtroom Tuesday and began her testimony by pointing at him to identify him as the defendant. The trial is expected to wrap up later this week. - Cary Davis covers courts in west Pasco County. He can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6236 or (800) 333-7505, ext. 6236. His e-mail address is cbdavis@sptimes.com.
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