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LISBON -- The aggravated murder case against Nathan Tataseo ended with his conviction, but started with the cross-examination of Columbiana Police Detective Richard Whitfield, the testimony of the medical examiner and closing arguments for both sides.
Defense attorney Charley Kidder asked jurors in Columbiana County Common Pleas Court to look into their hearts and heads and use common sense in looking at the evidence and weighing the testimony of the witnesses.
He questioned where the victim's cell phone was, the location of the missing television and the claims about his client lifting up a portable heater to murder his father, James E. Tataseo, even though one of the state's witnesses mentioned that Nathan had a bad shoulder. How could he lift up a heavy, awkward portable heater and bring it down the way they say he did. Police also found numerous knives in his room, but they weren't used.
Kidder said "it just doesn't make sense."
He said he felt sorry for all three Tataseo brothers for their loss and couldn't imagine coming into a courtroom to talk about family issues. He talked about when Nathan was told he couldn't come fishing anymore unless he paid his own way, how he didn't react when one of his brothers threw something at him, how he didn't react when handed both eviction notices.
"He didn't yell, he didn't swear, he didn't throw a punch," Kidder said.
He questioned why there was no drug testing if they said Nathan was a drug user. He questioned why the dates kept changing for the eviction. He questioned why none of the evidence tested showed both Nathan's and the victim's DNA together.
Chief Assistant Prosecutor Ryan Weikart also asked jurors to use their common sense, telling them not to pay attention to the side issues raised by the defense. He said the evidence was pretty straight forward and simple.
"What we do know is he was to be out of that house," he said.
Nathan Tataseo claimed he left the house on June 27, 2022 and didn't have any keys. He said he was hanging out under a tree in the woods on June 28, 2022 and June 29, 2022 and for a time on June 30, 2022. After being confronted about the keys found in his bag at a tree house in the woods, he claimed his father must have put them in there when he helped him pack on June 26, 2022.
Weikart said he lied about everything. Each time he was confronted with a lie, he tried to find out what investigators knew and came up with some story to try to explain what they said away.
"You have to remember how this happened. His Dad was moving on. He wasn't part of the plan. His Dad was going to sell the house. His free ride was ending," Weikart said.
He said that none of Nathan's stories checked out. Video surveillance showed him out and about in Columbiana when he was supposed to be laying around under the tree in the woods. A neighbor saw him coming out of the house the day after his father died. Video showed him using his father's bank card.
"The truth finally caught Nathan Tataseo," he said.
Assistant Prosecutor Alec Beech reviewed all the evidence, what the witnesses said and how James E. Tataseo planned to move on without Nathan. He talked about the phone records for the missing phone, showing phone calls James E. Tataseo made and received on June 28, 2022, a period between 9:15 p.m. and 10:01 p.m. when there was no activity, then a flurry of phone calls after that to a Youngstown drug dealer and others who were listed in a ledger found in Nathan's room.
Beech said that time with no activity, represented by a gray strip on the list of phone calls, was when James Tataseo was getting his skull crushed by that heater, at the hands of his son, Nathan.
He reviewed how the elements of each charge were proven and said to consider why Nathan Tataseo was hiding in the drain pipe where he was found when police saw his feet sticking out on July 1, 2022.
"He knew he was about to get caught," he said.
Dr. David Dolinak, a deputy medical examiner and forensic pathologist with the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Department, testified about the autopsy of James E. Tataseo, saying his cause of death was a blunt force trauma injury and his manner of death was homicide.
He reviewed the injuries to the victim's head and how the fins on the heating unit appeared to match up to the three parallel wounds. Considering the injuries to the head, the skull and the brain, he said he believed the victim would have lost consciousness right away, but he didn't believe that he died right away, that he died an hour or two later.