Prosecutor at trial in pediatrician's murder: 'The only life she could not save was her own'

DR. MELISSA Ketunuti spent the last moments of her life in her damp, concrete-floored basement, begging for mercy as a killer strangled the life out of her.

That's what Assistant District Attorney Peter Lim told a jury yesterday during his impassioned opening statement at the trial of Jason Smith, 39.

Smith is accused of killing Ketunuti, a promising doctor at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, in a fit of rage and then setting her body on fire while inside her Southwest Center City rowhouse on Jan. 21, 2013, for an exterminating job.

"What should have been her castle . . . ended up being so much worse," Lim said, referring to Ketunuti's prim three-story brick house, before launching into the gruesome details of how the 35-year-old pediatric fellow's killer manually strangled her, wrung her neck with a leather belt, hog-tied her hands and feet, and then piled various flammable detritus on and around her and lit her ablaze.

"The only life she could not save was her own," Lim said after telling jurors that Ketunuti had spent time in Botswana treating children with illnesses like AIDS and tuberculosis.

Investigators, the prosecutor said, followed a series of clues to the alleged killer, including cellphone records and surveillance video showing Smith - who has pleaded not guilty - leaving Ketunuti's house and circling the narrow block of Naudain Street near 17th twice in his Ford F-150 shortly before a dog walker arrived and discovered her body.

J. Michael Farrell, Smith's court-appointed attorney, contended in his opening that Smith is innocent, saying investigators "jumped to conclusions" and made assumptions that led them to charge him with murder. Farrell said police stormed Smith's Levittown home and shot the family dog in front of Smith, his 4-year-old son and his fiancee when they arrested him days after the killing. He argued that Smith's confession to homicide detectives is "inconsistent with scientific evidence."

Later yesterday, Lim and Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Selber called as witnesses the dog walker who discovered Ketunuti's burning body, a fire captain and a homicide detective who responded to the scene, and Ketunuti's academic adviser, whom she met with hours before she was killed.

Fire Capt. John Narkin described the shock among firefighters after he used pots of water to extinguish the fire on the woman's body and items around and on top of it and confirmed that it was indeed a human being that had been burning.

"One person touched the hand of the body just because of the waxy nature. They just didn't believe it was a body," Narkin said. "Couldn't believe it."

The trial is scheduled to resume today in front of Common Pleas Judge Sandy L.V. Byrd.