Andrea Canning

Engage in behavior, constantly asking other people to help him, convince her to stay in the marriage.

And he also reached out to something called a spellcaster.

Yeah.

This is something that I think makes this case particularly unique.

I can't remember a time that we talk about magic or spells in general when we're talking about homicide trials that we've never heard in San Diego.

But Larry Meliente spent thousands of dollars requesting spell after spell after spell from a couple of spellcasters.

If you talk to the prosecution, they say it shows that he had intent to harm his wife.

In fact, one of the spells was he was willing to ask for Maya's bones to be broken so that she wouldn't leave the house and be reliant on him.

But if you talk to the defense, they'll say all these spells show that he was just in love with her and so badly wanted to keep her and hold her close.

Seems bizarre.

The prosecutors do have a lot of missing pieces as to how they believe this alleged murder happened.

What are they telling the jury?

Oh, up front in the opening statements, the prosecution said, we're not going to be able to tell you how she died.

We don't have a body in this case.

But they've thrown out a couple of things.

They said there were some suspicious Google searches Larry was making about poison, what kind of poison acts the quickest, is there a plant poison where you never wake up?

And the big moment in trial came when they talked about a vial where they tested it for hemlock.

And according to the prosecution, the results came back positive and investigators found this vial in the house, right?

Well, it wasn't right away.

It wasn't during the initial search of the house.