Albert Arena is an engaging man. As a defense lawyer he has paid his dues in San Diego, he has represented the good and bad and ugly, best he could, for 22 years.

But the case of the polygamist wife killer was about to test his skills as never before.

The prosecution’s case had been thoroughly damning. What could Arena say?

Albert Arena, defense attorney (in court): Indeed the evidence will unfold and show you that those things did happen.

Agreeing with the prosecution? Well, not exactly.

Arena: Pay particularly close attention to that word, post morten.

Albert Arena told the jury that the prosecutor had it backwards.  It wasn’t a cold-blooded, planned killing.  It was joy who launched a brutal  attack, he claimed. Sean killed her in self defense.

And his desecration of her body was only a misguided attempt to ensure their children did not lose a father as well as a mother.

Arena: I have to humanize him.  Humanize him and let him tell his story.

And so Sean Goff took the stand.

Sean Goff: I gave my life to Jesus when I was six.

He played up faith, downplayed polygamy.

Sean Goff: We were not hiding the fact that we were engaged in plural marriage from anyone.

And mostly, he tried to sell the jury his own story of what happened that dreadful weekend.

He really was a handy man, he told the jury, and that so-called “murder kit” the prosecution displayed was actually, claimed Goff, for a weekend home improvement project.

The hacksaw—there in the frontyard a pipe that stuck out of the yard

The plastic sheeting—he didn’t want to get paint on the floor.

The  butcher knife? It wasn’t even for him. Joy, he says, selected the knife.

And now Sean Goff played his biggest card. He accused Joy of child abuse. On that last romantic evening, he said,

Joy became threatening.

Sean Goff: She said well you are not going to take the kids away from me.

Why?  Because, he claimed, he had confronted joy that night with a photograph proving that she’d beaten their youngest child.

Where was that picture?  Well, the defense never produced any such photograph.

But that is what set her off, claimed Sean.  He told her he’d keep the children and kick her out. The gravy train would be over.

And that, he said, is when she attacked him.

Sean Goff: And she had a knife.

Defense attorney: What happened?

Sean Goff: She yelled at me and then she swung the knife at me.

Defense attorney: Did she say anything when she swung the knife?

Sean Goff: Yes.

Defense attorney: Was she saying anything?

Sean Goff: She said “you son of a b*tch I will kill you.”

He punched her twice, he said. But she kept coming.

Sean Goff: At this point I was frightened. I thought she is serious.

And then, struggling for his life, claimed Sean, he grabbed the hand holding the knife.

Sean Goff: I got it turned around toward her and we’re still fighting over the knife and I  pushed the knife into her. At some point, I took the knife away and I stabbed her again.

Defense attorney: Where did you stab her, do you remember?

Sean Goff: At that point it was up here.

Defense attorney: Up here near my left shoulder?

Sean Goff: Somewhere in that area.

Defense attorney: What happened then?

Sean Goff: She kinda, uhm, at that point she kinda went limp.

Then, claimed Sean, though panicked and in shock, he bent down and tried to save her life, to give her CPR.

Sean Goff: I pulled out the knife and a lot of blood came out with it. And I checked her breathing and her pulse again and she didn’t have either at that time.

And then, he said, he wondered, should he call the police?

Sean Goff: She’s dead and I am there and she’s a woman. (crying)

Who would believe that she attacked him? He feared for himself and his children.

Sean Goff: I thought about this is Stone and Onyx’s mother and they were going to have to live without her.  And you know I felt like that they are probably going to live without me too. 

And so, it was a moral dilemma, said Sean, a deeply religious man, remember.

What was the right thing to do?

Sean Goff: I decided that I needed to cover it up.

And inside the tiny bathroom, Sean Goff began the grim task of erasing Joy Risker’s identity.

Sean Goff: I knew that I had to remove her fingertips.

Defense attorney: What were you feeling at that point in time?

Sean Goff: (crying) I felt horrified. Yeah I felt frightened, I felt sickened.  (crying)

But there was more to do.

Sean Goff: I decided that in order to cover up her identity, I would have to remove her teeth as well.

He used an old saw from the garage, he said, not the brand new hack saw he’d just bought.

Sean Goff: I couldn’t look at her.  I arranged the towels where I wouldn’t see anything except what I was cutting.

He struggled to get his junior wife’s remains into a large plastic container and into the rented SUV.

He cleaned the house, disposed of the saw, the knife, the bloody towels and took a shower.

Sean Goff: I sat down in the living room uhm horrified by what had happened. I was trying to wake up hoping it was a dream.

At daybreak, he said, he drove aimlessly, ending up 250 miles away, beneath that Palo Verde tree in the Arizona desert.

And one rock at a time, entombed Joy Risker in that elaborate cairn.

Sean Goff: After everything I had done, it was like the only way I could show some respect for her body.

And that was Sean Goff’s story: self-defense. An accident, really. The rest of it just a misguided effort to protect his children from a life without their father.

Defense attorney Arena turned to the Jury and took his best shot.

Defense attorney Albert Arena: And you have to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that it was not possible for Joy Risker to have introduced that knife in to the bedroom. But I wasn’t there, Mr. Greco wasn’t there, everything he talked about is his theory of the case.

But Prosecutor Greco had the last word.

The last question: What would Joy say?

Prosecutor Greco: She would say, I’ve already told you. I’ve told you with my blood in the house. And I have told you that this crime is so unspeakable with my hands and my fingers are missing. Hear her.  Hear her. 

The details had been horrific, stomach churning. But as jurors left the courtroom they still had to decide — whom did they believe?

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