During the second day of testimony, Dima Tower, 24, took the stand Thursday, Nov. 13 against the legal advice of his public defender as the only witness in his defense.
Tower kept his eyes averted from the jury as he answered questions by the prosecution, huffing into the microphone in front of him. When pressed by Assistant State Attorney Karen Fraivillig, the lead prosecutor, about what he was thinking when he took a kitchen knife and stalked into his adoptive parents’ bedroom where he stabbed them more than 140 times, Tower finally snapped.
“I was temporarily insane,” Tower said.
Tower is accused of killing his adoptive parents, Jennifer and Robbie Tower, in their North Port home on Mallicoat Road during the late-night hours of Aug. 31, 2023. He later fled the area, leading police on a high-speed car chase through residential streets, down and up Interstate 75 before disappearing into a wooded area on foot.
He was apprehended on Sept. 1, 2023, by Venice police officers behind a Shell gas station, previous testimony revealed.
He is charged with two counts of murder in the first degree and fleeing to elude police.
Unlike other murder trials, Tower’s defense, Assistant Public Defender Marc Gilman, told jurors Wednesday that he is not arguing the defendant’s innocence in this case. Instead, he is asking the jury to decide on the level of crime committed by Tower and urging them to find him guilty of manslaughter rather than premeditated murder.
Dima Tower admits to turbulent relationship with adoptive parents
Tower was born in a town near the Russian border in the eastern part of Ukraine, he testified Thursday afternoon. Before he was 10 years old, Tower’s mother died, and he was forced to bounce between living with different relatives until he was ultimately put in an orphanage.
When war broke out in the area, he was sent to a different region before meeting the Towers at the end of the summer 2013.
By the winter of 2015, he had moved to Florida to live with Jennifer and Robbie Tower.
From Tower’s testimony, it appeared he had a hard time adjusting to life in the U.S. — he didn’t know English when he first arrived, he dropped out of North Port High School by the 10th grade, and he admitted to not getting along with his adoptive father.
As Tower answered Gilman’s questions about his history of moving in-and-out of the Towers’ home prior to the night of the stabbings, he began to cry, hunching over and covering his face with a tissue.
After collecting himself, he confirmed that he felt he hadn’t appropriately answered questions asked by North Port Police Department detectives two years prior. The jury had previously watched in court a 58-minute video of Tower’s interview with police where he had reluctantly admitted to stabbing his parents.
When Gilman wrapped up questioning, Tower’s demeanor changed as Fraivillig stepped forward: His eyes remained cast downward, and he and Fraivillig talked over each other.
Tower told jurors that Jennifer and Robbie Tower weren’t his real parents and that they didn’t know how to raise someone who had come from a harsh environment like he had.
He also admitted that he had made their life a “living hell.” Tower said Jennifer had told him that her husband hadn’t wanted to adopt at all, then changing his mind to wanting to adopt a daughter before ultimately agreeing to adopt a son.
Fraivillig pressed Tower over and over about what he had been thinking the night he stabbed his parents. Tower admitted he hadn’t been thinking anything during the events of that night — not when he walked into the house and picked up a knife from the kitchen or when he walked into his parents’ bedroom, nor between the first and second stab of his father, or the countless after.
At least on two occasions Tower blurted out that he had been “temporarily insane.” Sarasota County Circuit Judge Thomas Krug intervened to tell the jury to ignore Tower’s outbursts about insanity as there is no insanity plea in this trial.
Tower further testified that he had only thought about killing his parents about two times, acting on the second thought.
“This was not a constant thought in my head,” Tower said.
When Fraivillig asked at the end of her questioning about whether Tower had decided to kill his parents while sitting in his car outside the home the night of Aug. 31, 2023, he responded with just one word: “Yes.”
Forensic testimony paints picture of Towers’ deaths
Among the last two witnesses called by the prosecution before they rested their case Thursday afternoon were a crime lab analyst with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the medical examiner.
Senior crime lab analyst Charlene Webster, who has worked with FDLE since 2009 analyzing DNA, confirmed to jurors that Robbie Tower’s DNA appeared on two knives collected from the Towers’ home. Additionally, Dima Tower’s DNA also appeared on one of the knives.
District 12 Medical Examiner Russell Vega’s testimony detailed the extent of injuries Jennifer and Robbie Tower sustained. Most of the lacerations Vega examined appeared to be superficial, damaging mostly skin tissue.
However, a few stab wounds penetrated deeper causing more damage to the Towers’ larynxes, or voice boxes, to arteries and jugular veins in their necks and small penetrations into their lung cavities. Vega opined that had medical assistance been forthcoming, the injuries wouldn’t have been fatal.
Collectively, Jennifer and Robbie Tower sustained approximately 147 stab wounds, including several to their hands and arms which could be considered defense wounds.
Vega testified that Jennifer and Robbie Tower’s causes of death were the multitude of cuts across their bodies, including cuts to their carotid artery and jugular vein, from stab wounds.
“In my opinion, the manner of death was and remains, homicide,” Vega said.
Gabriela Szymanowska covers the criminal justice, courts and legal system for the Herald-Tribune. Reach out with a news tip to gszymanowska@gannett.com. Support local journalism by subscribing.
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Dima Tower says he was ‘temporarily insane’ when he killed his parents in Sarasota County
Reporting by Gabriela Szymanowska, Sarasota Herald-Tribune / Sarasota Herald-Tribune
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