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Retired Placer County Sheriff’s Sgt. Paul Kovacich is tapped out and no longer can afford the services of the two top-tier lawyers who have represented him since his arrest last September on a charge of murdering his wife Janet a quarter century ago.
Lawyers Tom Leupp of Auburn and Clyde Blackmon of Sacramento are due in
superior court next Tuesday to request permission to withdraw from the
case. It then will be up to Judge Robert McElhany to appoint
replacement counsel, and the public defender is not out of the question.
From all appearances, it looks like the county will be footing the bill for Kovacich’s defense.
Whoever ends up representing him is expected to seek a postponement of
his trial, which is now tentatively set for next March. Kovacich, 58,
who remains free on $1.5 million bail, faces a prison term of 25 years
to life in prison if he is convicted.
In a related matter, two elderly persons who are prosecution witnesses
in the case were expected to give pre-trial testimony in the case this
week. The prosecution wants their testimony on record in the event they
die or become incapacitated before the trial.
One witness is a woman who was a neighbor of the Kovacich family in
Auburn’s Skyridge area, the other is a cosmetic surgeon who performed a
bosom enlargement operation on Janet Kovacich a short time before her
disappearance and presumed murder in September of 1982.
Prosecutors claim that a piece of human skull with a bullet hole in it
that was found in Rollins Reservoir on the Bear River is from Janet
Kovacich’s body. Janet Kovacich reportedly was preparing to divorce her
husband when she disappeared.
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