A teenager accused of killing his stepfather with a samurai sword denied that he had inflicted the fatal blows and said he had confessed to the murder to shield the real killer: his mother.
"I was trying to protect my mother," said Zachary Gibian, who testified in his own defense on Thursday in Suffolk County Criminal Court.
He told jurors that his stepfather, Scott Nager, had been sexually and psychologically abusing him for years. He said his mother only learned of the alleged sex abuse the night before the killing, when she allegedly walked in on her husband and son.
Gibian, 19, did not overtly blame his mother for the death of his stepfather but portrayed a scenario in which she was the only other person in the home on the morning of Feb. 27 last year, when Nager was slain.
Laura Nager, through her attorney, has insisted she was not the killer. The woman, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, has not been charged with any crime related to the killing. She has not appeared in the courthouse since the trial began earlier this month.
The chief of the Suffolk district attorney's homicide unit, John Collins, said prosecutors have the correct suspect on trial and said Gibian's testimony "stretches credulity."
"I think he's not telling the truth today," Collins said.
Gibian testified that after spending the night at a friend's house -- he left when his parents began to argue about the sexual encounter -- he came home about 11am to find the gruesome scene in his living room.
"I seen my stepfather sitting up with a big cut to his neck and side of his face," Gibian testified.
He said he saw his mother sitting on a second couch in the living room, covered in blood and crying, the sword near his stepfather's body.
"I was shocked. I didn't know what to do," he said.
Gibian also testified that his stepfather had repeatedly forced him to perform a sex act on him, sometimes with a pistol held to his head.
Prosecutors say what Keahon called abuse by Nager was parental discipline.
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