Randy Wyrick | randy@vaildaily.com
EAGLE — The bizarre case of a woman who accused her ex-husband of abducting her and leaving her bound in a dumpster 200 yards from the apartment they used to share went to the jury Friday morning following impassioned closing arguments from both the prosecution and defense.
Linnea Hayda faces four charges, including felony charges for tampering with physical evidence and attempting to influence a public servant.
“Think about a couple things. Who has a dog in this fight? Who has a motive in this case? All the statements from Ms. Hayda point to one motive, to go after her ex-husband. There’s retribution,” Assistant District Attorney Heidi McCollum said Friday morning.
The defense’s arguments are all excuses that point to someone else, McCollum said. “It’s everyone else’s fault,” McCollum said.
McCollum said Hayda started blaming her ex-husband from her hospital bed moments after Vail firefighters pulled her out of the dumpster and paramedics rushed her to the hospital.
“She said her ex-husband did this, even before she spoke with the police. She said in text messages that her ex-husband put a bag over her head and tried to suffocate her, that she finally tore holes in that bag so she could breathe, then put it back on because she was cold,” McCollum said.
He didn’t do that or anything like it, McCollum told the jury.
“All she wanted to do was get (her ex-husband),” McCollum said.
Hayda and her ex-husband were in a bitter custody battle over their two children.
Hayda told police she was abducted in an Avon parking lot as she walked to her car on the afternoon of March 26, 2018, when it was still light out. McCollum said that means Hayda’s ex-husband would have had to try to kill her and dump her body in the dumpster — all before he picked up his children from daycare, McCollum said.
As part of her guilty plea for previous domestic violence charges, Hayda was under a restraining order that barred her from retaliating against her ex-husband, McCollum said.
“Her entire motive was to retaliate against him,” McCollum said.
Defense attorney Thea Reiff argued that Vail police were careless in their investigation, that they did not prove Hayda’s ex-husband did not do this, and that exonerating him was based only on his word. Reiff also argued Hayda’s ex-husband might have used drugs to cause Hayda’s purported memory loss, adding that Hayda’s ex-husband had the most to gain if Hayda wound up in real trouble.
“He’s saying ‘I’m done with you, you’re trash and no one is going to believe you when you talk about it,’” Reiff said.
“You know the biases that came into this case as soon as the woman in the dumpster was identified,” Reiff said.
Vail police spent hundreds of hours investigating the case and did a solid job, McCollum countered.
“Thank goodness they did their job and checked out her story,” McCollum said.
Deputy District Attorney Johnny Lombardi asked the jury to let common sense rule their deliberations about Hayda. Her ex-husband was not on trial, Lombardi said, Hayda was.