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This undated photo published by the Montgomery County Police Department shows Daniel Beckwitt in Maryland. The jury selection is scheduled to begin Monday, April 8, 2019 for the trial of Beckwitt, a wealthy stock trader charged with murder in the killing of Askia Khafra in 2017, who helped him dig a network of tunnels under his house of Maryland when a fire broke out. . Prosecutors said Beckwitt was recklessly endangering Khafra's life during his covert campaign to build a bunker under his home in Bethesda to protect himself from a nuclear attack. (Montgomery County Police Department via AP)
ROCKVILLE, Md. – Firefighters found the naked and charred body of a 21-year-old man when they entered a burning house littered with piles of trash. A hole in the basement led them to a network of tunnels under the house.
The fire investigators quickly concluded that the Maryland home was a crime scene, a fatal end to the campaign of a wealthy securities trader for the construction of an underground bunker to protect himself from harm. 39, a nuclear attack. Millionaire of 27, Daniel Beckwitt, who grew up in the house, was charged with second degree murder and involuntary manslaughter upon the death of Askia Khafra in September 2017.
When Beckwitt's trial begins this week, his lawyers will likely try to persuade the jurors that Khafra's death was a tragic accident. Beckwitt risked his own safety in an unsuccessful attempt to save his friend from the fire, his lawyers said.
The jury selection for Beckwitt's trial is scheduled to begin Monday in a Montgomery County hearing room. And a judge recently ruled that jurors could hear testimony about evidence that investigators found in the fire-ravaged house in Bethesda, a suburb of Washington, D.C.
Beckwitt's lawyers argued that the investigators conducted unlawful, warrantless searches of the house and obtained a search warrant based on misleading information. An affidavit from the police falsely suggested that the fire had been deliberately lit by a person who had provided investigators with inconsistent information about the cause of the fire, said defense attorneys.
Prosecutors said the investigators had properly obtained and executed the search warrant in difficult conditions, including extreme storage conditions inside the house. Heaps of rubbish and debris covered most of the floors and reached the ceiling in places, preventing the search for evidence.
Judge Cheryl McCally of the Montgomery County Circuit Court rejected the defense lawyers' request last month to remove all the evidence seized at home. The judge stated that the "unique circumstances" of the search warranted the time it took for the investigators to complete it.
The investigators found Khafra's body in the basement, where a hole in the concrete floor had led to a shaft descending to a depth of 6 meters in tunnels opening to a length of about 200 meters. The tunnels had lights, an air circulation system, and heating powered by a "chain of random daisies," which created a fire hazard, said Montgomery County Attorney Douglas. Wink, at a hearing last year.
A few hours before the fire, Khafra sent a message to Beckwitt to warn him that it smelled of smoke in the tunnels. Beckwitt returned a circuit breaker that turned off the lights in the tunnels but turned on the power again after Khafra had said that he could not see, said Wink, accusing Beckwitt of ignoring the "obvious signs" of danger.
Beckwitt told a detective that he and Khafra were close friends and business partners. He said he had invested $ 6,000 in a Khafra group company after meeting him online. In exchange, Khafra agreed to help Beckwitt dig his tunnels.
Khafra's parents have filed a lawsuit for wrongful death against Beckwitt on the anniversary of the September 10, 2017 fire. His father, Dia Khafra, said in an interview the year. Last he and his wife had tried to persuade their son to stay away from Beckwitt's tunnels.
"I have always feared that something dangerous will happen to him," said Dia Khafra.
Beckwitt has made extraordinary efforts to maintain the secret of his project. He tried to make Khafra believe that they were digging the tunnels in Virginia instead of Maryland. Mr. Beckwitt told the investigators that he would look for Khafra in a rental car and drive him to Manassas, Virginia, where he had the young man put on "protective glasses" before driving him for about an hour. , according to a police report.
Khafra worked in the tunnels several days at a time, sleeping there and urinating and defecating in a bucket that Beckwitt lowered into the tunnels. Khafra had a cell phone, but Beckwitt used "spoofing" on the Internet to make it seem like he was in Virginia, according to Wink.
The prosecutor described Beckwitt as a skilled computer hacker who had a paranoid fixation on a possible nuclear attack by North Korea.
When he was a student at the University of Illinois, campus police arrested him in 2013, notably for computer fraud. He was suspected of having installed keyloggers on the computers of the Urbana School. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years of probation, according to online court information.
In 2016, after returning to Maryland, Beckwitt spoke at a hacker convention using the alias "3AlarmLampscooter" and wearing a fire-resistant suit and a visor that hid his face. Wink said that Beckwitt taught his audience how to make thermal bombs to destroy computer data "to protect themselves from hacking." Defense attorney Robert Bonsib said that Beckwitt's use of a pseudonym and disguise was harmless, typical of the "strange things" that people do on the Internet .
Beckwitt's lawyers say that he shouted for help from his neighbors after the fire and tried to rescue Khafra from the fire, but thick smoke and flames forced him to to withdraw. Beckwitt made repeated efforts to locate Khafra and expressed his concern for his friend, as well as putting his safety at risk to search for and rescue his friend.These efforts were reported in reports by firefighters and first aiders. the places "wrote.
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