MOORPARK : Neighbor Testifies in Strangulation Case

A Moorpark woman who lives behind James Linkenauger’s home told a Superior Court jury Thursday that she watched the defendant from her kitchen window for 20 minutes after being awakened by screams for help the night of the killing.

Linkenauger, on trial for the January strangling of his wife, was squatting in the living room moving his arms in front of him, said Molly Gardner. She said she assumed the defendant was playing with his cats or cleaning up after them.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Matthew J. Hardy suggested that Linkenauger, 38, actually was cleaning up blood stains left from the beating of JoAnn Linkenauger after she returned home from a weekend in Las Vegas.

Gardner testified that the day before the killing, she was in the Linkenauger home and did not notice any stains.

The neighbor, who lives in a small house directly behind the Linkenauger home, said the defendant came to see her on Jan. 18, the morning after JoAnn Linkenauger was killed.

“He said JoAnn had not come home,” Gardner said. “He showed me his hand. It was swollen, scratched on the right hand. It hadn’t been like that the night before.”

Linkenauger again visited Gardner after he had initially been questioned by police, the woman testified.

“They had found JoAnn’s car and there was a body next to it,” she told the jury. “He said he was too nervous to stay home so we went to the Moose Lodge for a drink.”

On cross-examination, defense attorney Louis B. Samonsky Jr. got Gardner to admit that she drank regularly and would have had to have seen his client through two screens, hanging plants and a steady rain.

Hardy said he would conclude the prosecution’s case late next week.