Slaying Suspect Couldn’t Explain Blood in House

A Moorpark man on trial for his wife’s murder could not explain to detectives how blood was spattered throughout his home the day her body was discovered, according to documents introduced in court Wednesday.

“I didn’t see no blood all over my living room,” James Linkenauger told homicide investigators in an interview the day his wife’s body was found dumped in a muddy Somis ravine. “I don’t know how to explain it.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Matthew J. Hardy on Wednesday introduced as evidence in the Ventura County Superior Court trial transcripts of four interviews investigators taped with Linkenauger on Jan. 18.

The tapes themselves, which total more than three hours, were played for the jury Wednesday and will conclude today, Hardy said.

Linkenauger also said in interviews that he had no idea who may have placed a call to 911 emergency operators from his Flory Avenue home around the time investigators say JoAnn Linkenauger was being beaten and choked to death. Nor did he know how his silver-banded watch came to be found at the scene where the woman’s body was dumped, the transcripts state.

“It’s like you’re going to pin somebody down . . . for something he didn’t do,” he told detectives. “This whole thing is weird.”

Linkenauger, an unemployed auto mechanic accused of beating and strangling JoAnn Linkenauger last January, told investigators that his wife had disappeared for up to a week on previous occasions, so he was not overly concerned when she failed to return from a weekend trip.

“It’s not really all that strange,” he said.

The defendant also described his wife as a diabetic who reacted unpredictably to her prescription medicine. “She didn’t know what she was going to do from one minute to the next,” he said.