Murder Trial With Identity Twist Under Way Defense Maintains Darryl Kuehl Knew Impersonator, Not The Real Paul Gruber

Prosecutors told jurors that former Sandpoint resident Darryl Kuehl, 46, shot Paul W. Gruber four times, stole his truck and boat, and withdrew thousands from the victim’s bank account with an automatic teller machine card.

But Kuehl’s lawyers insist their client never even knew Gruber.

The real Paul Gruber, that is.

In his opening statement on Wednesday at the Bonner County Courthouse, defense attorney Brent Featherston said the man whom Kuehl met more than three years ago - the same man Kuehl claims loaned him the truck, boat and money - was somebody impersonating Gruber.

“The state’s case in a nutshell is that Paul Gruber disappeared, and that Darryl Kuehl was found with some of Gruber’s property. We aren’t going to dispute that,” said Featherston. “What we are going to dispute is the fact that Darryl Kuehl ever met Paul Gruber.”

Special prosecutor Tom Watkins, from the Idaho attorney general’s office in Boise, said DNA from an unlikely source proves otherwise.

He told the jury that in order to hide the murder, Gruber’s killer went as far as replacing bloody carpet in the victim’s home, collecting his mail, even sending greeting cards to Gruber’s friends and relatives.

On one birthday card addressed to Gruber’s grandson, authorities found DNA in dried saliva on the back of a stamp they say matches genetic material from Kuehl’s own blood. Watkins said handwriting experts have verified the writing and signature on the card belongs to Kuehl, not Gruber.

He also said a hidden camera took pictures of Kuehl next to Gruber’s post office box some three weeks after Kuehl claimed to have last had contact with Gruber’s impersonator. Charged with first-degree murder, theft and five counts of forgery, Kuehl faces a possible death sentence if convicted.

Gruber was 53 years old when he disappeared on Jan. 5, 1994, shortly after returning from holidays with family in his native Reno, Nev. Gruber had been a schoolteacher and part-time card dealer there before moving to near Sandpoint in 1993.

His body wasn’t discovered until 17 months after he was reported missing by his family. Detectives eventually unearthed the victim from a shallow crawl-space grave beneath Gruber’s home, using trowels and delicate teaspoons to preserve evidence.

Following the conclusion of Wednesday’s opening statements, the prosecution, which included Watkins and Scott James, also a deputy attorney general, called Gruber’s daughter, Shellie Kepley, to the stand.

Outwardly calm, she spoke of a man who always wanted to be called “Daddy.” She recalled February 1994 when she became suspicious after her son and husband received birthday cards with messages that didn’t match her father’s normal tone or handwriting.

“This person made the p’s look like lollipops,” said Kepley, who lives in Reno. “Dad’s p’s never looked like lollipops.”

She had already called and left several messages on her father’s phone message machine, which was oddly without its usual friendly, humorous greeting. There was just a disconcerting “beep,” Kepley says. Growing even more worried, she phoned again on Feb. 23.

“When I called on Josiah’s birthday, there was a voice on my father’s answering machine that was not my father,” Kepley said. That’s when she called the Bonner County Sheriff’s Department.

When pressed in cross-examination, she told Everett Hofmeister, one of Kuehl’s two lawyers, that she would not be able to identify the voice if she heard it again.

Featherston described Darryl Kuehl as a church-going man with a large family, a non-drinker who doesn’t use drugs. He held up a day plan that he said Kuehl used to “religiously” document his life - and which Featherston says will help vindicate his client.

He told jurors that during the upcoming days of the trial, they would see a man “nobody believed from the beginning.

“You’re going to hear mountains of testimony of what happened before Jan. 5 and mountains of testimony of what happened after that. There’s a large space in between where we don’t know what happened,” Featherston said, adding later, “What the state is going to ask you to do is to make that leap between the two mountains.”