The pipe, Hurley told jurors, could have already been in the road, waiting to be “kicked up” by another vehicle.

“We don’t know and the state doesn’t know,” he said.

The forensic pathologist who performed Barb’s autopsy couldn’t explain all of the wide-ranging injuries, which don’t amount to foul play, Hurley said.

Prosecutors want jurors he believe that in the five minutes before he called 911, Kendhammer beat his wife for an unknown reason, intentionally entered a ditch, assaulted her without sustaining defensive wounds and then twice threw the pipe into the windshield, Hurley said.

“And he does it all in a public place,” he said. “It gives him two minutes to do all that. And that’s absurd.”

Hurley faulted investigators for bringing Kendhammer in for his interrogation under false pretenses on the day before his wife’s funeral and prosecutors for failing to prove how Kendhammer killed his wife.

“When you have no motive and all evidence suggests there is no motive, one has to ask where is the proof that this was some intentional assault,” Hurley said. “What reason would Todd Kendhammer ever have to harm his wife?”