By JOHN BIEMER
The Free Lance-Star

Date published: 10/1/2002

MWC grad's lawyer says deal broken

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ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

SNOW HILL, Md.--A judge denied a motion yesterday to drop murder charges against Erika Grace Sifrit in the killing of two Virginia tourists in Ocean City on Memorial Day weekend.

The Mary Washington College graduate's attorney, Arcangelo Tuminelli of Baltimore, tried to get the charges dropped on the basis of an agreement with Worcester County State's Attorney Joel Todd. The agreement was reached two days after Sifrit and her husband, Benjamin Sifrit, were arrested as they allegedly tried to burglarize an Ocean City Hooters restaurant.

Erika Sifrit is also a suspect in a May 11 theft at the Hooters in Spotsylvania County.

In yesterday's contentious six-hour hearing, the two lawyers demonstrated widely differing interpretations of their agreement, signed after midnight in the early hours of June 3. Later that day, two dismembered bodies in black plastic bags were found in a Delaware landfill.

The bodies are believed to be those of Martha Crutchley, 51, and her boyfriend Joshua Ford, 32, both of Fairfax. DNA tests to confirm the identifications are still pending.

In charging documents, Ocean City police say Erika Sifrit admitted that her husband shot and killed Crutchley and Ford, and that she helped him dump the remains in black plastic bags in a Rehoboth Beach, Del., trash bin. The Sifrits face first degree murder charges in the deaths.

According to the lawyers' agreement, murder charges against Erika Sifrit were to be dropped if she took a polygraph test and testified against her husband.

Erika Sifrit, who appeared in court in a pantsuit and leg shackles, briefly testified yesterday and reiterated this point. When asked if she was willing to waive her marital privilege to refuse to testify against her husband, she answered, "Most definitely, yes."

However, Todd said the agreement to drop the murder charges was nullified when she gave statements revealing to Secret Service agents that she played a larger role in the murders than she had earlier indicated. Erika Sifrit "contradicted herself so many times I wasn't sure she had any value left as a witness," Todd said.

That revelation occurred during a five-hour interrogation just before the planned lie-detector test on July 23, leading Worcester County Assistant State's Attorney Scott Collins to call it off.

Yesterday's testimony did not reveal what Erika Sifrit told the Secret Service agents, but Assistant State's Attorney Kathleen Smith said "it makes her involved in the murders up to her neck." Todd testified that when Tuminelli learned what his client had told the agents, "he looked like a deer being caught in the headlights."

Still, Tuminelli claimed that Todd broke the contract because he did not allow Erika Sifrit to take the polygraph.

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Date published: 10/1/2002