Opinion ID: 1801741
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Beatrice Toronczak

Text: Defendant and Beatrice Toronczak had a young son named Nicholas. For a period of time, Nicholas lived with Toronczak in Poland, and defendant was determined to get him back. Defendant did not care for the way Toronczak was raising Nicholas. In late 1995, defendant traveled to Warsaw and returned with Nicholas on January 3, 1996. Toronczak arrived in San Diego on February 11, 1996, and moved into defendant's apartment. Defendant had to move his then live-in girlfriend, Rose McKinney, to another apartment in the complex because Toronczak did not want McKinney around Nicholas. Toronczak was last seen on or shortly after her birthday on February 18, 1996. Defendant told friends and Toronczak's mother different things about her disappearance, e.g., that he did not know where Toronczak was, that Toronczak ran off with a Mexican man to the Mexican border, that she left and probably went to Germany, and that she maybe went to Las Vegas or to Poland. Defendant expressed no concern over her disappearance and did not try to find her. He refused a request by Toronczak's mother to file a missing person report and told her not to worry. Meanwhile, Nicholas was living with defendant. On March 11, 1996, the police went to defendant's apartment to investigate a missing person report concerning Toronczak. They entered the three storage rooms underneath defendant's apartment and saw evidence of a crime scene. After securing a search warrant, the police seized a number of items from those rooms, including a tote bag containing Toronczak's driver's license, her luggage containing clothing and personal items, and a yellow bucket containing what proved to be Toronczak's 10 severed fingers and parts of her jaw with some teeth attached as well as some loose teeth. Other seized items included female clothing and underwear that were cut apart, bloodstained flex cuffs that were cut, a bloodstained piece of cardboard, a butcher knife with Toronczak's blood and hair, a claw hammer with red stains, a blue tarp with red stains and hair, a handsaw stained with blood and biological matter, a bloodstained four-by-four piece of wood, and two pair of branch clippers, one of which had red stains. Also recovered from the storage room were a pair of yellow Playtex gloves stained with Toronczak's blood. Defendant's fingerprints were found inside the fingertips of latex surgical gloves, which apparently had been used inside the larger bloodstained Playtex gloves. Only defendant had the keys to the storage room. Evidence seized from defendant's apartment included four firearms and unused latex surgical gloves, yellow Playtex gloves, and flex cuffs. Also recovered were portions of a calendar for June 1993, with the dates 1, 9, and 24 cut out, and for December 1993, with the dates 7, 19, and 26 cut out. During the initial police entries into the second and third storage rooms, defendant had been placed in a police car. While in the car, he made a cell phone call to Rose McKinney. Although McKinney denied the incident at defendant's trial, she had earlier told Russell Wittmann that defendant had called from the back of the police car to tell her that he did it for them.