Phila. Police deny abusing accused killers of Center City jogger in order to get confession

Associated PressAssociated PressPHILADELPHIA -- Homicide detectives testified they sometimes stretched the truth in interrogating the two men accused of killing jogger Kimberly Ernest but emphatically denied hitting, threatening, coercing or psychologically abusing them. The defense contends that overzealous detectives under pressure to solve the high-profile case coerced the confessions. Ernest, 26, a paralegal who grew up in Hinsdale, Ill., was sexually assaulted, beaten and strangled. A man walking his dog early that morning of November 2, 1995, found her body in an outside, basement-level stairwell. Haak and Wise were arrested later that month and charged with murder, rape and kidnapping. Defense lawyers tried for a second day Tuesday to have the defendants' statements dismissed. Detectives testified that both defendants initially denied any involvement in the killings. The investigators said both men later admitted their guilt following hours of grilling in which detectives said they employed normal interrogation techniques. Det. Eugene Wyatt said he questioned Haak for four hours on November 28, 1995 and that the suspect was unmoved when told his stepfather had implicated him in the murder. Then, Wyatt testified, he told Haak a lie: that Wise had also told investigators that Haak was the real killer. Wise had not given a statement then. Outside the courtroom, Assistant District Attorney Judith Frankel Rubino said police do not have to tell a murder suspect the truth. ''You can lie,'' she said. ''That's an investigative tactic.'' Haak relented and gave a statement when his mother arrived at police headquarters and told detectives that her son had told her he was present when Ernest was killed, according to Det. Thomas Augustine. Wise was arrested early on the morning of November 29 and confronted with the statements given by Haak and Haak's mother and stepfather, and gave his own statement about five hours later, according to police. Wise's attorney, Jack McMahon, contends his client was beaten, stripped and coerced into falsely confessing. He is trying to get Wise's statement dismissed because the defendant was arrested on an invalid warrant on an unrelated case that had been withdrawn earlier. McMahon maintains that the arrest and statement should be dismissed. Haak's attorney, Bernard Siegel, said his client denied for nearly five hours that he was involved in the crime and changed his mind only after two new detectives questioned him for 10 minutes.