Ex-wife takes stand in Randy Marquardt murder trial

FORT MYERS, Fla.- Emotional testimony as a woman took the stand, telling a Lee County jury about the day she says her ex-husband kidnapped her, and also killed a friend.

It happened in September 2013. Now two years later, Randy Marquardt is on trial for murder and kidnapping.

Through an interpreter, Deborah DeSilva told a jury this afternoon, about the day she says her ex-husband Randy Marquardt kidnapped her. “He looked really strange. Lost, different look in his eyes,” said DeSilva.

She was babysitting at a friend’s house and says Marquardt got in through an open door, and “pulled my hair, took me out of the house.”

DeSilva says Marquardt then began to tell her he had done something. “Said I have done something. But it was legitimate defense.”

That something, state prosecutors say, was shooting and killing Joseph Gales. Marquardt wanted $150 Gales owed him, according to prosecutors.

DeSilva says she told Marquardt she’d be his alibi, in hopes of saving her own life. DeSilva says she suggested Marquardt ditch his gun and bloody shirt. He did.

DeSilva says she got away after convincing Marquardt to let her drive back and check on the child she was babysitting.

Deputies were at that home. She told them where they could find Marquardt. He was arrested at a nearby McDonald’s, where he thought he was waiting for her.

DeSilva will be back on the stand Wednesday morning, to answer the defense’s questions.