DAKOTA CITY - A medical examiner testified Thursday that the estranged wife of a West Des Moines man and her friend died from close-range shotgun blasts on a rural highway near Marshalltown.
Dr. Dennis Klein said the shots that killed Jessica Deemer and Bryce Mercer were fired from 2 to 4 feet away. Klein was the prosecution's last witness in the trial of Deemer's husband, Kyle Deemer.
The couple had been separated for three months in October 2008 when prosecutors say Kyle Deemer followed the two in his truck for more than an hour before running their car off the road and into a ditch. Prosecutors have said witnesses then saw Deemer shoot them both with a 20-gauge shotgun.
The prosecution also showed graphic photos of the bodies in court, causing family members at the trial to look away. Deemer stared ahead.
Deemer has been charged with first-degree murder. His defense attorney, Aaron Hawbaker, has argued that Deemer was too high on methamphetamine to consider the shootings beforehand, and therefore couldn't have premeditated the killings.
On Wednesday, an agent with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation testified that Kyle Deemer called his wife about four hours before the shooting. Bret Braafhart showed jurors a series of text messages that started out benignly but escalated into questions about Jessica Deemer's whereabouts.
''So (you) won't tell me where you're going?'' Kyle Deemer wrote in one, and later, ''Who are (you) with?''
Fifteen minutes later, Jessica Deemer responded, asking Kyle to stop calling her and to leave her alone.
Jessica Deemer, of Waukee, and Mercer, of West Des Moines, were co-workers at Principal Financial Group in downtown Des Moines. On the day they were killed, they were heading to Mercer's family barbecue.
Hawbaker on Thursday filed a motion to dismiss the murder charge on grounds that prosecutors had failed to present sufficient evidence. District Court Judge Carl Baker denied the request.
The defense will present its first witnesses Monday.
