A parolee and cocaine addict beat and strangled an 87-year-old neighbor during a robbery in the victim’s Golden Hill home, a prosecutor said Thursday, but a defense attorney told a jury his client was not guilty of murder.
Jeff Boswell, 44, faces life in prison without parole if convicted in the July 2013 death of Blanche Griffin.
Boswell is charged with first-degree murder, with special circumstance allegations that the murder happened during a robbery and a burglary. Boswell has a lengthy criminal history, including a burglary conviction from 1995, according to the prosecution.
In her opening statement, Deputy District Attorney Lucy Yturralde said Boswell had moved into his girlfriend’s duplex behind Griffin’s home on F Street near 29th Street.
A landscaper saw the victim outside her home looking ‘nervous and afraid” the morning of July 9, 2013, the prosecutor said.
Boswell’s girlfriend told police that she noticed he was not in bed after midnight and returned about 7 a.m. looking “disheveled.”
When Griffin’s daughter couldn’t reach her mother, her husband went to check on his mother-in-law about 2:45 p.m. and saw her body through a window.
A deputy medical examiner determined Griffin had suffered blunt force trauma to her head, neck and chest, and was strangled, according to Yturralde.
The victim’s wedding ring and other jewelry she always wore were missing and her computer was gone, the prosecutor said.
The next morning, when police went to interview Boswell, he was hiding in the bathroom of his girlfriend’s duplex, Yturralde told the jury.
Boswell was arrested but subsequently released from custody, during which time he burglarized a liquor store and a market within an eight-day period in July 2013 because he needed money to support his drug habit, the prosecutor said.
Yturralde said Boswell’s DNA was found under Griffin’s fingernails and on her neck. He was then re-arrested on a murder charge.
Defense attorney William Stone told the jury that Boswell was not guilty of murder. The attorney said the defendant would not stay at his girlfriend’s home at night and struggled to avoid falling back into his drug addiction, which is why he was holed up in his girlfriend’s bathroom the day after the victim’s body was discovered.
Boswell later turned himself in when he realized he was being looked at for murder, his attorney said.
— City News Service
