Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Venice, FL: N.C. man charged in murder of wife at Venice hotel

By Kim Hackett

Published: Tuesday, May 25, 2010 at 1:00 a.m.
Police arrested a North Carolina man over the weekend and charged him with second-degree murder for allegedly smothering his estranged wife at the Holiday House hotel earlier this month.

Kimberly Kane, 37, reportedly died May 14, but the city and police said nothing about it at the time. According to police reports obtained Monday, Scott Christopher Hahn, 39, was detained after authorities found him trying to get Kane's body, wrapped in a blanket, into Kane's rental car in the hotel's parking lot in the 400 block of U.S. 41 Bypass N.

Witnesses told police they saw Hahn carry the body to the parking lot on a luggage rack. A suspicious bystander called 911 to report that Hahn remained at the hotel after saying he was taking his wife to the hospital, according to a police report.

It is the second murder case in the city in two months after more than a decade without a homicide.

Hahn was initially arrested for violating a domestic violence order Kane had filed against him in Charlotte, N.C., last May.

Neither the city or Venice police released information about the homicide until the second-degree murder charges were filed Sunday, following an autopsy.

Police would not comment on the case.

The victim's father, Richard Kane, said his daughter had been separated from Hahn since last year when he "beat her up and put her in the hospital."

Assault charges were filed May 9, 2009, against Hahn, who had been arrested 29 times, mostly for traffic and alcohol-related offenses, including two DUIs. The order was recently amended to allow phone contact between Hahn and Kane.

"We tried to keep her away from him," said Richard Kane, who lives aboard a yacht in Punta Gorda.

He said Kimberly, his only child, had no children. She married Hahn in January 2009, after knowing him briefly.

Kane worked at a restaurant at Fishermen's Village in Punta Gorda for about four months. She recently returned to North Carolina for a job as a social worker. Kane did not know if his daughter was trying to reconcile with Hahn, a man he had never met.

Kane said his daughter had been visiting him for a few days and moved to the hotel because she said the boat was too noisy. He said he last spoke to his daughter the day before she was killed.

"That's when I found out he was down here," Kane said. "I was very upset with her."

According to the police report, Hahn smothered Kane in Room 211 at the Holiday House, then wrapped her body in a blanket, bound it with grey cable and moved it to the parking lot on a luggage cart. Several witnesses told police that they spoke to Hahn as he was moving the body. Hahn reportedly told one witness he was moving trash from his room and another that he was taking the victim to the hospital.

A witness, who reported that Hahn appeared to be intoxicated, called 911 when Hahn was "milling about the area without leaving to get medical help."

The witness relayed the emergency operator's CPR instructions to Hahn, who unwrapped the victim's head but was hesitant to touch it, according to the report.

Her father said Kane was a compassionate person who spent time in the Peace Corps in Kenya after she graduated from the University of Georgia.

"She was a wonderful, giving person," Richard Kane said. "The best daughter you could ever have."

Memorial services are planned in North Carolina and in Indiana, Kane said.

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