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'Defendant, judge view graphic video of death sceneBy LARRY BALLARDand ANN LANGELCourier Staff WritersAccused murderer Gary Buck looked on without expression Thursday as a judge viewed graphic videotaped evidence from the basement where 3-year-old Darren Gerdemann was found dead last November, his throat slashed andhis body partially wrapped in a garbage bag.Buck, charged with first-degree murder in the boy’s death, never took his eyes from the screen as a police camera took viewers through the Evansdale apartmentBuck shared with the child's mother, Trenia Gerdemann.The tape was shown to Judge James Bauch over objections front Buck’s court-appointed attorney,Karl Briner, who said it only contributes to the sensational nature of the trial, which enters its fourth day today in Black Hawk County District Court.Briner protested that close-ups of the boy’s blood-splattered body would be replayed on television.“It’s no secret to anyone in tins courtroom that this kind of case lends itself to some measure of sensationalism,’’ he said.Bauch allowed cameras in the courtroom for the trial, which has been the subject of media coverage since Buck, 21, was arrested on Nov. 25,1991.Bauch, who will render a verdict in the non-jury trial, overruled Briner’s objection, then took a seal in the jury box to watch the tape. Buck was seated not far away,dressed in a red sports shirt and gray slacks.The tape, shot by police investigators, started in the kitchen of the converted funeral parlor turned apartment, at 840 Central Ave., Evansdale, and went room by room showing overflowing ash trays, children’s toys, and what appeared to be flecks of blood in various places leading to the basement,That’s where police found the boy’s body, wrapped in a garbage bag, in a picnic cooler, after a neighborhood search that began when Trenia Gerdemann reported Darren missing.The camera focused on the boy’s fully clothed body, lying open-mouthed on the cement floor outside the cooler. A gaping wound was visible on the left sideof the child’s neck, below the jawline.Prosecutor Tom Ferguson said Buck first shot Darren Gerdemannin the head with a pellet gun after the boy had misbehaved. Police have testified Buck told them he slashed the child’s neck to stop him from screaming and “stop his suffering,” then held him over the edge of a bathtub and let him bleed to death.In a statement to police, Buck said he planned to dispose of the body and blame the murder on an unidentified relative.In other testimony Thursday, Dr. Peter Stephens said that it would have taken “a few minutes” for Darren to die from the wound to the neck. Stephens, a state medical examiner who performed the autopsy Nov. 26, 1991, said “significant” force would have to be used to cause the two neck wounds.Although Buck claimed in hisstatement to police that he had been sharpening his knife before the killing, Stephens said the instrument used to kill Darren wasa “not very sharp knife,”Stephens said the pellet was fired from straight-on, while the knife wound was inflicted in a “cross-wise” motion.He said that normally, a 3-year-old child would have a quart of blood in his body, but at the time of autopsy on Darren, there was “relatively little blood left in the body.”Stephens said that although the neck wound was a fatal one, the pellet wound probably would not have required hospitalization.Robert Harvey, a criminalist with the Division of Criminal Investigation laboratory in Des Moines, testified he examined the three air guns Buck allegedly owned. The pellet pistol lie believes was used was pumped up three to 10 times.The state is expected to call a psychiatrist this morning to testify to Buck’s mental state.Gary Buck
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