Two in a Million

Business

Dana's lawyer, Ernest Kinney, would later tell jurors that Dana was a smart kid. An intelligent college boy reared to develop business strategies that the world would someday take note of—but also someone whose life, Kinney wasn't going to sugarcoat it, did revolve around money.

Indeed.

But Dana had friends, too, Kinney suggested. Yes. So-called acquaintances, who would never have what he had. And those friends, his lawyer implied, felt they could take it from him the old-fashioned way.

Even then, when Dana had sat down and thought about who could have killed his family, "[He] never ever suspected," Kinney told jurors, "in his wildest dreams, Joel did this."

Smartly, DA Oppliger had promised the jury that he would "show ... that the slayer, the triggerman, had no independent motive of his own."

Nothing had been taken from the house. How would Dana explain that Joel was going to get his hands of the Ewell fortune? If Joel had decided to rob the Ewells because he was jealous of what Dana had, how was he going to steal a lifestyle?

On the surface, the argument made little sense.

"Joel Radovcich committed the act," Oppliger explained during his opening statement. "But he received no direct financial benefit. The only way he can receive any financial benefit is gifting from an innocent heir or a payoff from his crime partner."

Do the job and get paid.

A simple business transaction.

Deal.