Man Convicted In Plot To Kill Deaf Daughter Held $200,000 Insurance Policy; Other Charges Pending

A man was convicted Thursday of trying to push his 9-year-old deaf daughter into the path of a pickup truck to collect more than $200,000 in life insurance money.

David Crist’s attempted murder conviction in the 1993 plot clears the way for him to be tried in the attempted electrocution of his 4-year-old daughter and the contract slaying of his only brother. In each case, prosecutors said, the motive was greed.

“Justice was a little delayed but justice was served,” Prosecutor Thomas Marino said. “Mr. Crist will stay behind bars where he belongs.”

Prosecutors said Crist was so deeply in debt that he concocted the scheme to fake a flat tire, then push his daughter in front of a pickup truck driven by an accomplice, a woman who testified he offered to pay her $5,000.

Jurors sat riveted last week as Diane Crist, now 13, testified through a sign-language interpreter that her father twice threw her onto a rural road to be hit by a pickup truck.

“When I got up I was limping and I said, ‘Daddy, help me.’ But he came over, picked me up and threw me back down on the road!” Diane’s right ankle was broken, her face, knee and thigh were scraped, and her side was bruised.

Crist, 38, who was also convicted of solicitation of criminal homicide and five other charges, faces up to 30 years in prison when sentenced in January.

“He still says he’s innocent, but he expected it,” said defense attorney William Miele.

Crist’s attorneys tried to plant a seed of reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors by questioning Diane’s injuries and why she waited years to come forward.

According to Miele, the prosecution’s three medical experts provided different accounts of how Diane’s ankle could have been broken. He also questioned why the doctors, who said Crist interfered when they tried to interview Diane, waited years to tell police.

“If this was such a horrible injury and Mr. Crist was acting suspicious, didn’t they get suspicious?” he said. “No. And that’s because this was just a run-of-the-mill accident.”

“Children often don’t tell things for many years,” prosecutor Kenneth Osokow responded. “That’s because they’re stuck with their parents. What was she going to do?”

He kept reminding jurors about the insurance policies Crist had on Diane. “Motive, motive, motive.”

Crist collected $133,000 from a life insurance policy in his brother’s 1982 death and stood to gain $200,000 if his two young daughters hadn’t survived.