Drifter testifies he doesnt remember talk of possible killing

<p>A man who told Georgia police 3 1/2 years ago that he may have killed a Long Island teenager testified Thursday at the trial of another man charged in the killing that he did not remember the conversation.</p><p>As he had done a day earlier when he was questioned by a prosecutor, Anton Shalinski repeatedly told defense attorney Michael Soshnick on cross-examination that he could not remember any details of a March 2000 videotaped interview with a detective from the Douglasville, Ga., police department.</p><p>The existence of the videotape, which Assistant Suffolk County District Attorney John Collins said he only learned about from detectives last week, has been seized upon by Soshnick as proof that his client, Stephen Manolis, could not be the one who brutally killed 16-year-old Kristin Scarabelli on her lawn on Mothers Day 1996.</p><p>Prosecutors contend that Scarabelli was accosted by Manolis at her home between 10:50 and 11:20 p.m. on May 12, 1996. A medical examiner found that the young woman was strangled; her partially clad body was found two days later, lying under a tree and obscured by bushes about 500 feet down the street from her home.</p><p>But it has taken them more than seven years to bring Manolis to trial on two counts of second-degree murder, crediting advances in DNA science to allegedly link him to the crime.</p><p>It was the technology that needed to catch up to the evidence that we had, Collins said last month following opening statements. He said DNA experts will link to Manolis both a shirt button found on Scarabellis front lawn and a hair fragment found on her T-shirt.</p><p>Meanwhile, Soshnick suggested in his opening statement that a third man, who had dated a friend of Scarabellis, may have been the killer because he allegedly threatened the teenager weeks before she was slain for allegedly having caused a split between him and his girlfriend.</p><p>But it was the revelation of the Shalinski tape that has had jurors shaking their heads.</p><p>Shalinski, a 27-year-old drifter who grew up in the same East Northport neighborhood as the victim, was located by investigators last weekend living in Missoula, Mont.</p><p>Members of the district attorneys office brought him back to Long Island earlier this week.</p><p>In testimony that began on Wednesday, Shalinski has backed away from the claim he made in 2000 that he should be considered a prime suspect in the Scarabellis killing. In a calm monotone of mostly yes and no answers, he repeatedly said he could not recall what he told Douglasville police, and was even foggier on any possible role in the teens death, blaming his alcohol and drug use.</p><p>When asked by Soshnick if he was going on a bender on the day Scarabelli was killed, Shalinski said, I was already there, sir.</p><p>Before Soshnick began his cross-examination, he made a motion for a mistrial, claiming that the revelation of the existence of a videotape, as well as an audiotaped telephone interview between Suffolk detectives and Shalinski made at the same time in 2000, prejudiced his clients right to a fair trial.</p><p>Acting State Supreme Court Justice Michael Mullen chided Collins for not being aware of the tapes before the trial began, told the defense attorney that the late introduction of the Shalinksi revelation has not interfered yet with your clients right to a fair trial.</p><p>...You might have been surprised, but you and your client have not been prejudiced.</p>

http://accesswdun.com/article/2003/11/184441