Trial begins for Lakshminivasa Nerusu, who was extradited from India.
By The American Bazaar Staff
WASHINGTON, DC: Lakshminivasa Nerusu, 46, the Indian man who brutally killed his wife by stabbing her 59 times, and then lay in wait for his daughter, 14, to come back from school, to kill her with a slash of the knife, and then again in the same sick routine, for his 12-year-old son to come back from school, before almost decapitating him with a single slash of the same knife to the throat, is now on trial in Michigan, and has pleaded ‘insanity’ in those three murders.
The gruesome murders occurred in October of 2008 in Novi, Michigan, located in the suburbs of Detroit. The bodies of Jayalakshmi Nerusu, the killer’s wife, his daughter, Tejasvi, who was a Honors student, and son Siva Kumar, were found two weeks later. Jayalakshmi was stabbed to death soon after the children went to school. After killing his family that day, Nerusu fled to Andhra Pradesh, India. He was arrested by the police there in 2013, and extradited to the US. Neruru has admitted to killing his wife and children, but according to his attorney, Lawrence Kaluzny, the crime was the effect of unemployment, which put financial pressure on him, and he “blacked out” and went insane during the murders.
“There is no getting around that the cause of those deaths was my client, Mr. Nerusu,” Kaluzny said, the Detoit Free Press reported. “In spite of what he did, he is still entitled to a fair trial.” Nerusu, according to Kaluzny, was collapsing under financial woes and constant pressure from his wife to support the family. “He said, ‘I had to be insane to kill my family, whom I loved.’ ” The prosecution, however, sees it as cold blooded murder. Seven men and seven women, selected last week as jurors to hear the case, listened as Assistant Prosecutor Tricia Dare in her opening statement laid out a morning “that began like any other,” in the Nerusu home. Only Nerusu, she said, had been up the night before on the Internet, researching “human anatomy, human dissection and airline schedules.”
Nerusu, sat at the defense table in an Oakland County Circuit courtroom, his head bowed, reported the Press. He is likely to take the stand in his own defense. “The man who was supposed to love them, care for them and protect them was the same man who brought their young lives to an horrific end,” she said. “Your verdict should be nothing short of three counts of first-degree murder.” The Press detailed Nerusu’s macabre act. When his daughter came through the door, fresh off the school bus, her father waited until she took her shoes off and deposited her backpack. He then slit her throat with a single swipe. Forty minutes after he killed his daughter, Nerusu ambushed his 12-year-old son, Siva Kumar, as he, too, arrived home. He slashed his son’s throat before the boy could get his second shoe off, leaving him dead in the entry of the family’s three-story townhouse in the Wexford complex in Novi.
“He still has his backpack on,” Dare said. Nerusu nearly “decapitated him.” The children’s mother, stabbed 59 times, lay dead nearby on the floor. She had been killed hours earlier, after the kids had gone off to school in the morning. Judge Nanci Grant warned jurors before graphic photos were displayed on a screen of the crime scene, the entry where Nerusu’s son lay face down in puddles of dried blood. Two of the jurors took their glasses off for a moment, reported the Press. Nerusu, at the defense table, turned away from the screen and did not look up as the photos of his dead family appeared, instead busily scribbling on a yellow legal pad. The trial is expected to last one to two weeks. If convicted of first-degree murder, Nerusu faces life in prison without parole. Michigan does not have capital punishment.