A woman’s body was found stuffed inside her car’s trunk. Now, a jury will decide whether her fiancé is to blame

OAKLAND An Alameda County jury began deliberating Wednesday whether an Oakland man beat his one-time fianc to death five years ago before stuffing her into the trunk of her car and ditching her body along an Interstate frontage road in San Leandro Alameda County prosecutors pointed to a voluminous collage of surveillance footage cell phone records and DNA evidence while making their final arguments to jurors in the event of Richard Charles who faces second-degree murder in the March death of -year-old Anika Crane They disclosed it all happened while Crane visited Charles home near Mills College after which Charles allegedly enlisted an unidentified helper to dispose of her body The defendant chose to use his fists over and over and over on Anika Crane until she took her last breath Deputy District Attorney Colleen Clark declared And then the defendant took very calculated and very deliberate initiatives to attempt to cover up his crime and to deflect blame away from him To Charles attorney the entire affair amounted to a baseless story with little in the way of hard proof including a definitive crime scene an exact time of death or a motive That is all that it is here it s a theory of what might have happened defense attorney Miki Tal noted But there s a multitude of holes in this This is like a puzzle with several missing pieces Crane s disappearance five years ago garnered little in the way of broad media attention or alerts from law enforcement It took three months before officers released an arrest Her former fianc and boyfriend of years Crane and Charles had a complicated relationship and engagement leadership announced They met when she was and broke up several times over the next several years During one such split Charles fathered a child with another woman officers declared Their relationship definitively appeared to have ended shortly before she was last seen on March leadership commented That day after Crane got off work she stopped at her grandmother s house and then visited a liquor store near Bancroft and th avenues in East Oakland Surveillance footage revealed Charles Ford F- pulling over near the store just as another man got out of Crane s car That s when Charles appeared to get out of the pickup walk by the man who had been with Crane and surprise her inside the store Both Crane and Charles then drove their own vehicles to Charles home an RV where Crane had stayed the previous night Crane was never seen alive again Over the following day surveillance footage established Crane s Ford Fiesta repeatedly leaving and returning to Charles house during which only Charles appeared on surveillance footage around his house Charles also appeared to repeatedly dial an unnamed helper from West Oakland while allegedly spending hours cleaning his home prosecutors stated The day after Crane was last seen alive prosecutors say surveillance footage established Charles loading something into the trunk of Crane s car before driving the sedan to San Leandro and leaving it there The following day Charles filed a workplace injury overview for a swollen right hand that prosecutors declared appeared to be fraudulent Those are the actions of a murderer trying to cover up their crime Clark declared She lauded Crane s family for springing to action so fleetly when Crane stopped picking up her phone and for ultimately finding a few of the last known video footage of her alive Clark specifically honed in on the fact that Charles twice recounted agents that he hadn t spoken with Crane after seeing her at the liquor store despite surveillance footage suggesting Crane drove to his home afterward Bureaucrats also discovered the tip of a blue latex glove between Crane s shoulder and the inside wall of her car s trunk which appeared to contain Charles DNA according to court testimony Charles attorney spent nearly an hour Wednesday highlighting all that prosecutors didn t show A motive almost any blood at the crime scene or any suggestion of Charles not cooperating with police He never fled Tal stressed Rather he tried calling Crane times in the four days after she vanished And Tal explained he joined Crane s mother in calling to assessment her missing on March Investigators ascertained almost nothing in the way of Crane s blood inside his RV save for a small amount on one of his old filthy slippers This is entirely a circumstantial evidence scenario Tal reported This is not story time ladies and gentlemen This is not what could have happened This is the criminal justice system and it has the highest burden of proof Tal also took issue with prosecutors indicates that Charles had a helper who guided his alleged cleaning of the crime scene She highlighted how that person was never identified or heard from at trial framing it as indicative of a half-baked incident against her client We have no idea who this person is Tal noted You have no phone content no conversations you don t even have the person s name For you to just assume it was a so-called helper makes no sense and is not what your job is Moments before the jury left to deliberate Clark pleaded for jurors to completely follow the evidence and return with a conviction Unanswered questions do not mean the defendant gets away with murdering Anika Crane Clark mentioned The defendant doesn t get rewarded for covering up his crime