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The oldest son of Johnny Brickman Wall testified at his father's murder trial Wednesday that before his parents separated in 2005, their relationship "consisted mostly of fighting."
Pelle Wall — who believes his father killed his mother — took the stand for the prosecution and said his father was sad at first after the couple's separation and 2006 divorce, but that sadness later turned to anger.
His mother, Uta von Schwedler, though, was happy and positive in the year before she died and was never depressed or suicidal, said Wall, 21. He added that her boyfriend, Nils Abramson, treated her very well.
"I think they really loved each other," Pelle Wall said.
Johnny Wall, 51, who was a Salt Lake City pediatrician at the time of his ex-wife's death, is charged with one count of first-degree felony murder. The 49-year-old von Schwedler, a University of Utah scientist, was found by Abramson submerged in a bathtub in her Sugar House home Sept. 27, 2011.
Prosecutors say Johnny Wall drugged his ex-wife with Xanax and then drowned her — the culmination of a messy divorce and custody battle over their four children.
Defense attorneys maintain that von Schwedler's death was either a suicide or an accident.
The two also fought about money and property, including scrapbooks, prosecutors say. Abramson has testified that one of the scrapbooks was floating at her feet when he discovered her body.
Pelle Wall testified Wednesday that his parents were still fighting in 2011 over money and property, including the scrapbooks — von Schwedler had made a separate album for each child over the years.
Wall said he sent most of the photo albums to his grandmother in Germany because he feared his dad might damage or destroy them. His father later sued him for return of the albums, Wall said.
Johnny Wall was charged and arrested in April 2013 and has been held in jail in lieu of $1.5 million cash-only bail since.
The lag in the time between von Schwedler's death and charges being filed was explained, in part, on Tuesday by Salt Lake City police detective Cordon Parks, who testified that a sergeant said von Schwedler's death was a suicide and ordered him to close the case in January 2012. Police Chief Chris Burbank later reopened it, Parks said.
On Wednesday, Pelle Wall said he and his siblings spent the nights of Sept. 26 and Sept. 27, 2011, at their father's home. On the morning of Sept 27, he testified, he noticed his father's left eye was red and swollen.
Johnny Wall told his son and others, including the police, that his dog had stepped on him while he was sleeping outside on his porch the night before.
However, in a videotaped deposition he gave in a civil case, parts of which were shown Tuesday to the jury, Wall claimed that von Schwedler had sneaked into his house in the middle of the night and hit him in the face when he ran up to her as she was exiting his garage. Wall said he didn't report the incident because he thought his children would lose their mother if police learned von Schwedler had been in his house.
Pelle Wall said he had never seen Johnny Wall sleep on the porch at his house but acknowledged that his father had mentioned doing so. He said his father told him about his mother's death by saying, "Uta's dead and they think I did it."
According to Pelle Wall, his father, who was distraught, said that "only a monster could do this" and asked "Am I a monster?"
"I guess you could call it a mental breakdown," he said.
After his mother's death, Pelle Wall said, his father discouraged him from having contact with her family. Pelle Wall moved out of Johnny Wall's house on Jan. 10, 2012, he said.
In spring 2012, Pelle Wall filed a court petition asking that his three younger siblings be removed from his father's custody. A judge granted the request in April 2013, when a family friend was appointed guardian of the two younger Wall children who were under age 18.
Also testifying Wednesday was optician Melina Burdette, who said Johnny Wall came to get his glasses adjusted some time in 2011. His left eyeball was completely red, she said.
Burdette said that months later, after reading an article on von Schwedler's death in City Weekly, she called the Salt Lake City Police Department to report she might have some evidence in the Wall case. The person she spoke to had no idea of what she was talking about, according to Burdette.
Abramson, who had testified earlier in the trial, also took the stand Wednesday and said he had pushed to keep an investigation of von Schwedler's death open.
"All of us knew it wasn't suicide," he said.
And Emily Jeskie, a forensic DNA analyst at Sorenson Forensics, testified that male DNA was found under von Schwedler's fingernail. But because the sample was degraded, Wall could not be excluded or included as the source of the DNA, Jeskie said.
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