Eisenman killing called ambush

Friday, April 16, 2004 | 9:40 a.m.

Prosecutors say Alfred "Chip" Centofanti ambushed his ex-wife, Virginia "Gina" Eisenman, when he shot her seven times on the night of Dec. 20, 2000.

Centofanti's defense attorney says Centofanti exploded in fear and acted out of self-defense.

Now it's time for the jury to decide.

The jury in Centofanti's murder trial was to begin deliberating his fate this morning after 22 days of trial.

The 12 jurors heard more than four hours of closing arguments Thursday as the prosecution argued for jurors to return a verdict of first-degree murder with a deadly weapon and the defense argued for an acquittal, or at the least, a determination that the shooting was voluntary manslaughter.

"I submit to you that Gina Centofanti walked into an ambush that night," Chief Deputy District Attorney Clark Peterson told the jury.

Peterson said in his closing arguments that Centofanti must have had the gun "at hand," locked and loaded to be able to pull it on Eisenman when she came to pick up the couple's infant son that December night.

Peterson also questioned whether Eisenman ever attacked Centofanti at all or if that was all part of a smear campaign to make himself look good.

Centofanti's fear of Eisenman is a "convenient story cooked up by the defense as a desperate plea to save his skin here at trial," Peterson told the jury.

If Eisenman did attack Centofanti, Peterson said, it still is not reasonable to believe he needed to shoot her seven times at close range when Centofanti himself testified that he had been able to wrestle a gun out of Eisenman's hand in a Dec. 5 domestic dispute.

"His story is not reasonable by any stretch of the imagination," Peterson said.

Peterson said no one may know what exactly motivated Centofanti to kill his ex-wife, but that any combination of jealousy, anger, obsession and pride may have played a part. Centofanti may have felt these emotions because Eisenman was cheating on him, because she "toppled his hypothetical perfect life" when she left him or because she had moved on and he did not.

Throughout his closing arguments, Peterson painted Centofanti as a liar, particularly because Centofanti testified in court that a plastic surgeon had told him Eisenman had a drug-induced hole in her nose. That plastic surgeon, Dr. Scott Sessions, rejected Centofanti's claim in testimony Wednesday.

Peterson urged the jury to "throw out everything that man (Centofanti) said on the witness stand" per the jury instructions that allowed jurors to disregard any testimony in which a witness is believed to have lied about a material fact.

Allen Bloom, Centofanti's defense attorney, argued that the prosecution had not proved any of their supposed motives and that it was Centofanti who had filed for divorce against Eisenman.

"If there was ever any jealousy it stopped Dec. 5," Bloom said.

"The prosecution's theory that Chip was jealous, obsessive, revengeful is grasping at straws."

Bloom painted the shooting as an "explosion," and in addition to arguing self-defense, said the shooting was done in the "heat of passion" or from a "sudden quarrel" -- elements of involuntary manslaughter.

Centofanti himself testified last week that he does not remember many details of the shooting, saying that he remembers Eisenman calling him an expletive and then charging at him with her arm raised. The next thing Centofanti testified he remembers is asking for his mother and father from jail.

Centofanti did say that he remembers thinking that Eisenman was trying to kill him again, like he testified she tried to do in the Dec. 5 incident.

"The fear that Chip felt during that time period is very real," Bloom said.