Husband tells jurors
wife demanded drugs

A fatal fight allegedly
began when he came home
without any

By Linda Hosek
Star-Bulletin

The day James C. Kendrick killed his 21-year-old wife began with her telling him to find some "speed" so she could get through the night as a stripper.

Kendrick, who testified yesterday in his murder trial, said his Slovakian wife, Nika Hulejova, threw an alarm clock at him when he came home without any.

He said she also yelled: "That's all you had to do. Can't you do anything I want you do do?"

Kendrick, who frequently wiped his eyes and quickened his breath, described the next few minutes that ended with a bullet through the back of his wife's head on Nov. 4, 1995, in their newly leased Marco Polo condominium.

His arm cut from the clock's broken glass, he said he picked up the gun he kept in a drawer by their bed and took it into a room where she was lying down.

"I said: 'Is this what you want? Is this what you want? I don't know what happened after that."

He said he didn't think about whether the gun, a gift from his former wife, was loaded. He said he didn't remember cocking the gun or straddling her, as he had told police he had. He said he didn't recall her hand coming up, adding: "The only way the gun could have gone off was if she grabbed it."

Kendrick, a 50-year-old Vietnam War veteran, said he wasn't referring to killing her when he said: "Is this what you want?"

"When I went into that room, there was no reason in the world to hurt her, no reason for me to push her or grab her hair or anything," he said.

When he heard the gun's loud bang, he said she fell to the floor. He said he propped her up, covered her with a trench coat and ran to a friend's apartment with a working phone to call 911.

Kendrick said he returned, picked her up and listened to the flutter of her breath.

"I put my mouth to hers and tried to breath for her," he said. "I told her to fight and I prayed to God for her to not die."

Myles Breiner, Kendrick's attorney, said his client suffered from emotional distress at the time of the incident, making him guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter.

But Deputy Prosecutor Randy Oyama said Kendrick intended to murder his wife or knew that her death could result when he cocked a loaded gun to the back of her head.

He said Kendrick abused her and left his gun in the open to remind her of his control. He said she had wanted to leave, but feared deportation. He said she had just learned that foreign abuse victims could divorce and planned to do so.

Oyama is expected today to cross-examine Kendrick today before the jury and Circuit Judge Michael Town.

Kendrick began his testimony by saying he fell in love with Hulejova at first sight and wanted to do anything for her.

"She had an accent that drove me nuts," he added.

He said he resisted friends, who said she was just using him for money and to get a green card, and married her at a Las Vegas wedding chapel.

Kendrick said when she began to talk divorce he realized the only reason she had married him was for a green card.

He said he had started to apply to change her immigration status, but believed he wasn't making enough money to qualify.

He said he didn't have any money and they were living off what she made from exotic dancing.