Nov. 10, 2020

A Cain & Able Murder Case: David Melfi

A true crime story about fratricide. The killing involves fraternal twins. One twin, David Melfi along with a friend helped kill the other twin by stabbing him 45 times. It is a shocking crime. The Prosecutor in the case, Arthur A. Busch narrates the case from his vantage point. This is a riveting story. It remained in the local news for nearly two years from the time of the crime in 1995 until the sentencing in 1997.

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Read the news article about the resentencing of David Melfi:

Flint man who killed twin at age 16 will no longer serve life in prison

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Transcript

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David Malfi was a troubled young man who took an active role in the killing of his fraternal brother and leaving him to die in his own blood.

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Michael Malfi, his twin, was found in the basement of the family home in a pool of blood.

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David was charged and convicted of first-degree murder in March 1995 in the connection with the slaying of his brother Michael.

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David Malfi found himself in an unusual role.

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He was both the relative of the victim and the convicted killer.

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David Malfi's attorney, Neil Zabo, told the Genesee County jury that David Malfey used horrible, terrible judgment, but he denied his client, David Malfey, killed his brother Michael.

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Yet there was no evidence that David tried to help his brother Michael, who was stabbed 45 times.

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The jury heard the claim that David Malfi was guilty of no more than being an accessory after the fact to a murder because he was not directly involved in the killing.

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Melfi's trial attorney cast doubt on an alleged accomplice in the brutal murder.

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His name was Patrick N.

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Kinney, who accepted a plea, a bargain, and testified against Melfi at the jury trial in Flint, Michigan.

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Kinney pled guilty to a second-degree murder charge.

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He testified under oath that he and David Melfi planned to kill Michael Melfi and other family members if necessary so they could take their family van and flee to Florida or Texas.

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Kinney told Flint police detectives that Michael Malfi was lured into the basement where he Kenny tried to slit Michael Melfi's throat, but was unable to when Michael began to fight back.

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Kenney then called David Melfi to the basement to help him during the struggle.

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Patrick Kenney testified that the brother David Melfi provided a knife and held down his twin brother as Kenny stabbed him repeatedly 45 times in all.

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And Abel also brought an offering, fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock.

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The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering.

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But Cain But on Cain and his offerings, he did not look with favor.

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So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.

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Then the Lord said to Cain, Why are you angry?

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Why is your face downcast?

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If you do what is right, you will not be accepted.

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But if you do not do what's right, sin is crouching at your door.

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It desires to have you, but you must rule over it.

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Now Cain said to his brother Abel, let's go out to the field.

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While they were there in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.

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Then the Lord said to Cain, Where's your brother Abel?

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I don't know, he replied.

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Am I my brother's keeper?

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The Lord said, What have you done?

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Listen, your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground.

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It is downright spooky that the story of David and Michael Melfi is nearly identical to the first recorded murder found in the Bible.

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Like Cain, David Melfi was jealous of his twin brother and had animosity towards his parents.

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Also, like Cain, when confronted by his father Adam about the killing of his brother, Cain told his dad Adam that his brother Abel laid on the ground with many wounds.

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Cain told his father he was not sure that he inflicted any of those wounds, especially fatal ones.

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In simple terms, Cain denied the obvious, and he refused to accept responsibility for the death of his brother, Abel.

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This was so not just to his father, but to God, who confronted him and punished him with isolation.

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It is unfathomable to me to understand that high school kids could demonstrate such brutality.

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This new age case of Cain and Abel still shocks me today, even after the handling of hundreds of murder cases.

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I readily admit that I was not ready for everything I was about to see and hear while sitting in that fancy county prosecutor's office at the courthouse.

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I thought my years in the streets of Flint and my big fancy education prepared me for nearly anything.

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I was totally wrong.

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Just like a confident marine boot camp graduate thinks he's ready for war.

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He's not ready for war until the bullets start flying and he gets a whiff of the smell of death.

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After nearly four decades of practicing criminal law in Flint, Michigan, a place where some of the most violent crimes in the nation are committed.

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I really admit that I have not seen it all that established my lack of experience.

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Brutal murder of teenager Michael Melfi at the hands of his own brother was every parent's worst nightmare.

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Parents of the boys, Stephen and Kim Melfi, found themselves in the dual roles of victims, family, and defendants' family.

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The conflict faced by the Melfies, while rare, is not unheard of in recorded human history.

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Adam and Eve, the first humans created by God according to the Bible in its very first chapter, faced the exact same dilemma when their son, Cain, murdered their other son, Abel.

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That story is laid out in the book of Genesis, chapter 4.

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The biblical story had it that Cain and Abel were brothers.

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One brother killed the other.

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That in that in and of itself was not so wildly unusual in Flint.

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During my tenure as prosecuting attorney, I prosecuted homicides of that variety over my tenure.

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Flint, Michigan, with its endless penchant for the dramatically unusual, found its center stage to an epic true crime episode.

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Flint's version of Cain and Abel was a spellbinding case with a unique twist.

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The story goes that the twin brother, along with a high school chum, decided one day they would lay in wait at his home and kill the twin boy's mom.

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Fortunately, mom and dad did not come home right away from their work.

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Instead, his twin brother did.

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He came home from school.

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The grand scheme was to steal their mom's car after killing her and then drive to Florida.

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In case you do not realize this, we have in Flint almost as many cloudy days without seeing the sun as Seattle.

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Unfortunately, things did not go as planned for the Melfi family, and the unexpected arrival of the twin brother foiled the fanciful plot to leave Michigan without anyone knowing.

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These two fussy-faced teenagers together brutally murdered the other's twin brother.

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With his twin brother holding him down, the other teenage boy repeatedly stabbed him to death.

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Clearly, that is a sensational news story in any city in America, and in Flint, it was more than unusual blather or another dead body found on the streets for Patrick Kenny of the North End of Flint.

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I met with the father, father of the twin boys at my law office.

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He was, as you would expect, deeply troubled by the murder of his son.

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The fact his own son would perpetrate such an evil act devastated him.

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And the and the twin boys, the father being both a victim and the teenager's son support system.

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The teenagers were both facing first-degree murder charges.

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After exposure to so much of the messy side of Flint's underbelly, I admit to becoming immune to much emotional processing of some of this stuff, even murder.

00:10:07.250 --> 00:10:11.649
But this Kane and Abel case shocked the hell out of me.

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It continued to haunt me the longer I thought about it.

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After a while of seeing so much death year in and year out, you get rather detached emotionally from the collateral damage by senseless killing.

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In some cases, you begin realizing that the victim's lifestyle brought him to judgment day.

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You also realize that this dead human being could have been the person who on any other day and time could have been a killer himself.

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It was as if the people in street murders were switching roles as the shooters and the killed.

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But in real life, switching roles does not happen very often where guns are involved and fired.

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I remember having drinks with a veteran Flint police detective, hoping to gain some insight into the new world I found myself in as top cop.

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The detective kept describing the street murders as misdemeanor murders.

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It was shocking.

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I told him that he was jaded and that is disrespectful to the victim.

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He just said, You shall see.

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Hearing the brutal death of someone referred to as a misdemeanor murder such a flippant in such a flippant fashion, that devalued the life of the victim.

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My mind drifted back once again to the subject in my conference room with the father of the twin boys.

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The carousel of feelings expressed by this grieving father not just touched me very deeply as I realized the depths and the deep deaths depths of his unthinkable dilemma.

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He was a father, trying in the only way he could to communicate that his now charged son was a great kid, but he did a horrible thing in killing his twin brother.

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The burden his father carried was seeing to it that there was retribution and punishment for the senseless killing of a son, all while seeking compassion and rehabilitation for his other young son, the murderer.

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That father's emotional conflict is the very essence of the conflict that America faces in each and every case of violent crime.

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There's a maddening anger that swells up to the point of wanting to kill.

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There is the anguish of a loving parent so eager to find a solution for the most desperate and unredeemable of situations.

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Ultimately, after clearing my mind, this compelling emotional outpouring, I concluded the calculation and premeditation involved in this brutal homicide was such that neither of these teenagers could be trusted again to live in our free society.

00:13:21.570 --> 00:13:24.049
The public needed to be protected.

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Their crime was so heinous that sending them to prison for life was the only choice.

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In my opinion, rehabilitation of these kids was unlikely.

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Because of my never-ending doubts about a repeat performance by these twisted teenage minds, the public was best served by my staying focused on their safety.

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I charged the teenagers in juvenile court and successfully argued these killers belonged in the adult court system.

00:13:57.009 --> 00:14:02.529
I found myself extremely torn by these decisions to treat kids as adults.

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While I'm a political liberal, I'm also a person who grew up in the streets far worse than these boys.

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I knew from my own experiences in my version of Flint neighborhood, there are some people who just cannot be trusted.

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A Genesee County jury convicted both David Melfi and Patrick Kinney of murder.

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Jeffrey L.

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Nethercutt sentenced David Melfi, who was at the time 18 years old, to mandatory life in prison without parole for his conviction of first-degree murder.

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Judge Nethercutt noted at the sentencing hearing that he had served 20 years on the bench at that time and he had handled over 250 murder cases.

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This act of murder was more shocking and memorable to me than any case I've ever handled.

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Judge Nethercutt gave Patrick Kenny, the 17 years old, uh a discretionary life term for second-degree murder.

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This made Kenny eligible for parole after 15 years.

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At Kenny's sentencing hearing, Judge Nethercutt noted that the defendant had become a devoted Christian.

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The motive for this murder was nonsense, the judge said.

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I'm not in the business of soul saving.

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I'm in the business of making our community safe and enforcing the concept of right and wrong and sin.

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Patrick Kinney, now 41 years old, is serving his life sentence in a Michigan prison facility.

00:15:37.090 --> 00:15:43.330
Stephen Malfi was interviewed after the case was over that won the jury verdict in this case against his son.

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They found him guilty of first-degree murder.

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How do you explain watching your brother being stabbed 43 times and leave with the guy who did it?

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Why didn't David just tell the truth?

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We mourn the loss of another son.

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He's my son.

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I still love him.

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There are a lot of casualties in this.

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Today, the parents of David Malfi seem to have washed their hands of their son as he was marched to prison for the rest of his life.

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They did the same thing as Adam and Eve, who also found their distance from their son Kane.

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In the Flint Journal interview in January 2019, David Malfi told a news reporter, I wish every day that I could get out, and I regret the things that I did.

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My family hasn't talked to me for years, but I want them to know I'm not a monster.

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I don't know they'd even consider it, said Melfi.

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But I wish they'd give me a chance.

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I would hope that they have enough love in them, even if it's buried, to give me a second chance.