By Jim Hannah
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Dennis Greene Sr. (right) enters court in Kenton County for a preliminary hearing earlier this year. (Patrick Reddy photo) | ZOOM |

COVINGTON - Soon after his wife's near decapitation with a carving knife, prosecutors say, Dennis Greene Sr. told two friends he "did it O.J-style, without the Bronco."

Assistant Kenton Commonwealth Attorney Christy Muncy told jurors during opening statements Thursday in Greene's murder trial in Kenton Circuit Court that they will hear from the two women who claim Greene made that statement.

O.J. Simpson was found not guilty by a jury of killing his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, who was nearly decapitated in a knife attack in 1994. Simpson later was declared responsible for the killing in a civil court finding.

Muncy asked the jury to find Greene guilty of one count of murder, a charge punishable by up to life in prison. She said Greene brutally slashed Tara Barrett Greene's throat in front of the couple's 7-year-old son and then wrote a rap song glorifying the killing.

That song, in part, went like this:

"She kept at it and I had to take her (expletive) life.

It's just Dennis Greene and I ain't got a (expletive) wife."

The defense team's opening arguments were nearly as chilling.

"Dennis Greene killed Tara Greene," said public defender Mary Rafizadeh. "That's not in dispute."

She then described, sometimes in greater detail than what the prosecution had, the killing.

Rafizadeh concluded her nearly 20-minute opening statement by asking the jury to find that Greene acted under extreme emotional distress and therefore should be convicted of a lesser charge. Such a defense requires proving that there was a trigger that so enraged the person that he no longer was in control of his emotions.

Rafizadeh tried to divert attention from Greene and to Tara Greene's actions in the days leading up to her killing. Rafizadeh said Tara Greene was unfaithful, that she smoked marijuana, and that she neglected her only child by letting him play in a trash container.

Rafizadeh drove home the point by saying Tara Greene was not only seeing four other men but also had played an answering-machine message from one of them to her husband to taunt and antagonize him in the hours leading up to the killing.

The defense team repeatedly stressed that Greene had always cooperated with police, even volunteering where detectives could find evidence.

Prosecutors said defendants who want to cooperate don't flee to Chicago and hide out with friends.

Rafizadeh said Greene killed his wife May 4 after an argument inside their Lakeside Park apartment, took the couple's son to his parents' house and then fled to Chicago. Greene's seven-hour standoff May 8 with U.S. marshals ended peacefully.

E-mail jhannah@enquirer.com