A Schererville man was found guilty Friday of killing his girlfriend in 2020.
Paul Jarosik, 38, was arrested on a murder charge in December 2020. Jarosik said he found Michelle Brown, 46, dead in their apartment after returning home from work April 2, 2020. Police originally thought Brown’s death was natural or accidental, until the coroner’s report declared it a homicide.
Brown’s autopsy report from April 3, 2020, cited multiple instances of blunt-force trauma to the head.
Coroner Zhou Wang testified Thursday that the nature of the injuries Brown suffered suggest that she could have died instantly.
Prosecutor Infinity Westberg said in her closing arguments that Jarosik had the “means, motive and opportunity” to kill Brown.
“It’s not some stranger,” she said. “All evidence points to Paul.”
Westberg highlighted a “volatile relationship” between the defendant and the decedent, pointing to “belittling, abusive language,” particularly in a video obtained from Brown’s cellphone that shown during the trial.
In the video, Jarosik can be heard telling Brown: “Oh my God, you’re stupid. Why I found you (expletive) attractive I don’t even know.” He goes on to say “you might as well just jump off a (expletive) bridge and kill yourself. No one would miss you.”
Westberg also touched on inconsistencies in Jarosik’s story surrounding Brown’s death and the bruises seen on her face and body on the day she died.
Jarosik said in an interview with police shown in court Friday that Brown was losing weight and fainting from not eating enough.
He told police that she fainted and fell into the closet and that’s how she got the bruises on her face.
Jarosik told jurors Thursday that Brown got the bruise from a faulty oven door hitting her face.
“All those things are not a coincidence,” Westberg said.
During his closing arguments, defense attorney Herbert Shaps emphasized that the burden of proof for murder falls on the state, and if jurors have even the slightest doubt, they must find Jarosik not guilty.
In particular, he noted discrepancies in Brown’s supposed time of death. He pointed to a text Brown sent to her boss at 11:01 a.m.
The time stamp on the text is not reflective of the time that it was actually sent because when phone records are extracted, they’re displayed in Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC.
UTC is the standard time by which all time zones are based. To calculate the actual time that the message was sent, depending on the location and Daylight Saving Time, hours would need to be added or subtracted.
In this case, five hours needed to be subtracted, meaning Brown’s text was sent at 6:01 a.m. Shaps said that even with the UTC conversion, Jarosik could not have killed Brown after 6:01 a.m. because he was at work.
“There is no credible evidence that she was dead before 4 a.m.,” he said.
Shaps also mentioned Jarosik’s hands when he was arrested: “If he’s doing all this striking, according to the state, there’d be damage to his hands.”
Shaps said the prosecutors presented no direct evidence, and “the circumstantial evidence wasn’t conclusive enough to exclude every reasonable theory of innocence.”
He reiterated his opening statement, in which he focused on the factual evidence of the case, which he said would prove Jarosik’s innocence.
“The defense supported those facts,” Shaps said. “The state did not.”
Jurors deliberated for about three hours before they came back with a guilty verdict.
Brown’s older sister Evette Beckman said through tears that she was happy about the verdict, and it’s been clear to her that Jarosik was guilty since her sister died three years ago.
“It’s sad to be happy over something like that,” she said.
Beckman also expressed her gratitude to the prosecutors and the detectives after hearing the verdict.
She said she was grateful that “someone else is fighting for her besides me.”
Jarosik is set to be sentenced April 28.
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