Pianka Trial: Parents are most likely insurance beneficiaries

From the beginning, Grace Pianka's defense team has insisted that she didn't kill her husband after finding out he was having an affair.

Instead, they pointed to the other woman, Jen McIntyre, telling the jury she could easily have been the shooter and benefited financially from the death of her lover, Adam Kostewicz

But Wednesday, Dan Francoeur, from The Hartford insurance company, testified that even as a court appointed special administrator for Kostewicz's estate, there was no way McIntyre could have received the $806,000 in life insurance money.

"No, she can't get the money," Francoeur told the jury.

And instead of painting McIntyre as a gold-digging murderer, Francoeur said she was very helpful in arranging a conference call between Kostewicz's parents in Poland and the insurance company's claims adjuster, along with a Polish translator, so that the situation could be explained.

Francoeur explained to the jury that Pianka was the original beneficiary of the policy, and if found not guilty, would benefit. But when Kostewicz's parents, his only heirs, submitted a counter claim on behalf of the estate, the case went to court, where a judge will decide who receives the money.

McIntyre was appointed special administrator of Kostewicz estate by a Maricopa County Superior Court judge about five months after the shooting, but Francoeur said she was specifically not involved with the insurance claim because the two competing claims had pushed it into probate court for a decision.

Defense attorney Alicia Dominguez stuck to her theory that McIntyre could somehow benefit from Kostewiz's death by stressing that Francoeur didn't know what arrangements may have made between McIntyre and the parents to split the insurance proceeds.

Police say Pianka shot and killed her husband after discovering he was having the affair and was packing to leave the couple's Ahwatukee Foothills home on April 15, 2006. They then say she fled, leaving her shoes and cell phone behind, and attempted suicide in Bagdad, Ariz.

The defense says it was McIntyre who had motive and ability, and that she did it. They say that when a neighbor saw Pianka crying and driving away from the family home around 7 p.m., she was fleeing from the reality of a philandering husband, not a murder scene.

The first trial ended in a hung jury, half sure she was guilty and half who said the prosecution could never place the murder weapon in Pianka's hand.

The trial in Maricopa County Superior Court is expected to continue through March.

If Pianka, 51, is found guilty of the second-degree murder, she faces up to 22 years in prison.