Adam Kaufman's defense received a big boost Thursday from an unlikely source: his wife's mother.
Kaufman is accused of strangling Eleonora Kaufman in 2007, but her family is supporting him.
Frida Aizman told the jury she loves Adam Kaufman "like her own son," and said she's even closer with him now than she was before her daughter's death. He has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder.
Aizman described Kaufman as a loving, devoted father and husband who never even raised his voice.
"I saw only good stuff between those two," the Russian native said of the relationship between him and his wife, also known as Lina.
Aizman said she spoke to her daughter five or six times a day, and lived with the couple for a time as well, and never heard of any difficulties between them.
Aizman also testified that she personally saw her daughter faint up to a dozen times over the years, bolstering the defense contention that Lina Kaufman's death was an accident, that she collapsed and hit her neck on a magazine rack in the bathroom.
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But under cross-examination, Aizman admitted she gave sworn statements that her daughter was a healthy, active woman.
Earlier in the day, one of the state's last witnesses, physics Professor James Ipser, showed the jury an animated video he made which the state claims shows how a person would fall under the defense scenario.
Adam Kaufman's team says Lina Kaufman pitched forward from the toilet and smashed her neck on the magazine rack. The professor's video shows a figure falling face- and headfirst into the rack.
"There was no configuration that we could find where the dominant impact was on the neck, it was always on the face and the head and the chin, which were leading," Ipser said.
But under intense cross-examination, he admitted there was no way to know exactly what happened, and said he based his simulation only on the information provided by the state.
