Continued from Part 1.

Affair with ‘Mama’

Marinello touched on his marriages and his affair with Annette Daniels.

Earlier, under questioning by his defense attorneys, Marinello discussed his relationship with Liz Marinello, who prosecutors contend he shot and killed after laying in wait near a Metairie office building in August 2006.

He was also asked why he stayed married to his previous wife, Andrea, for twenty years, even though he admitted they had been separated since 1982.

“Because Andrea is special,” he said. “She is the mother of my son.”

He got choked up on the stand on two occasions during testimony before breaking for lunch.

One of those occasions was when questioned about his sexual relationship with Annette Daniels, whom he has admitted having an affair with and who, along with her husband David Daniels, have provided an alibi for Marinello by saying that he was in Jackson, Mississippi a short time after Liz Marinello was shot.

“I want to make this crystal clear,” he said. “Annette and I, she testified that she didn’t like sex. It was that way with Dave, it was that way with me.” He said their affair lasted only ten months in the late 70s.

He talked about buying a mustache in an effort to resemble Victor Newman of the Young and the Restless.

“I’ve been embarrassed to tears for two weeks,” he said, pausing before prosecutors objected.

The disguise and murder weapon

Marinello joked to the jury at one point about his mustache and hair pieces.

“It’s not fake hair,” he said. “It’s real hair. It’s just somebody else’s.”

Marinello said that the mustache was ‘prickly’ and that he eventually “put it in the commode and flushed it away.” He added that he wanted to look like Young and the Restless character Victor Newman.

When asked about his interrogation by deputies following Liz’s killing, Marinello explained telling them he hadn’t ever owned a gun.

He told the jury that he thought the deputies were asking if he were ever the ‘registered owner’ of a gun.

As for the .38 caliber handgun that an Eliott’s Gun Shop employee testified he had test fired, Marinello said it wasn’t David Daniels’ .38, that prosecutors alleged he had been loaned, but it was one of three antiques or old guns found by volunteers when they were gutting his house on Germain Street.

Marinello said two of the guns were very old. “They looked like something out of a Wyatt Earp movie,” he quipped, before telling the jury that his great grandfather had owned a gun shop in the French Quarter in the 20s and 30s and that the weapons likely came from that shop.

He also denied purchasing any Nyclad ammunition and said to the jury he didn’t know why the Elliott’s employee would say that as part of the investigation.

He also said that he gets receipts for everything, and that there would have been a receipt for ammunition.

Talking about the 9 mm that he purchased from Elliott’s in early August in 2006, Marinello said he had fired the weapon and had purchased it as protection.

“I fired it behind the trailer. I wanted to get the feel of the gun. This was going to be my protection.”

Investigators did recover that weapon from Marinello’s FEMA trailer, but not the other three that were allegedly found during the house gutting.

Marinello speculated that they may have been stolen from the gutted house or they were taken out to the trash with debris from the house. 

Phone records

Talking about the cell phone records that showed when he was going to Mississippi, he said he had turned it off because he didn’t want the station (WWL Radio, where he worked) to call him into work on his vacation.

And when asked about why he didn’t go to the hospital after he had heard Liz had been shot, he replied. “I wasn’t in any condition to drive back to New Orleans because the news devastated me.”

He said he also thought better of it because of the bitter divorce he was going through, and thinking it would be better for her family if he wasn’t there.

Cross-examination is expected to continue Saturday morning.