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The night of Sept. 27, 2011, Malkie Wall heard a knock on the front door of her father's home. It was the police.
"They wouldn't tell me what was going on," the 19-year-old woman testified Thursday in 3rd District Court. "They just asked me to get my dad."
Her father, Johnny Brickman Wall, left with the officers and was gone for hours. When he returned after 3 a.m., he appeared to be having a mental breakdown, the daughter said.
"He opened the door, and he said, 'Your mom's dead and they think I did it,' " Malkie Wall testified. "… He was not coherent. He was crying. He was not with it."
Malkie Wall's testimony came during the second week of trial for her father, who is charged with first-degree felony murder in the death of his ex-wife, Uta von Schwedler.
The daughter said Thursday that Johnny Wall repeated the same phrases over and over when he returned home from his interview with Salt Lake City police:
"Only a monster would do that."
"Did I do it?"
"Is that possible?"
"No one would do that."
Malkie Wall said her father was later taken to a mental health facility, where he stayed for several days.
It was like nothing she had ever seen before from her father, the teenager testified.
Police had questioned the 51-year-old Salt Lake City pediatrician for four hours that night, insisting at times that he had killed von Schwedler.
Defense attorney G. Fred Metos told jurors during opening statements last week that a video recording of his client's interview with police will show a man questioning his own sanity. He said the police officers lied to Johnny Wall, telling him a neighbor had seen him at von Schwedler's home.
"What you'll see in that video is Johnny's demeanor change," Metos said. "The officers convinced him, basically, that he was losing his mind."
When police asked Johnny Wall about scratches on his forearms and why one of his eyes was bleeding internally, he claimed "the dog stepped on him" the previous night, according to court documents.
Malkie Wall said her father told her a similar story earlier that day before police arrived.
"He said something about Molly [the dog] scratching him," she testified. "…Molly did jump on people. But she wasn't super aggressive."
Malkie Wall also said that the morning of Sept. 27, 2011, she awoke at her father's house at 6 a.m., but couldn't find him. His car was gone, as well. She said she texted or called him, but got no answer.
She said that when her dad picked her up from piano lessons that afternoon, she asked where he had been. "I think he said he had to go see someone," she testified.
While prosecutors have accused the former doctor of murdering his ex-wife after years of contention stemming from a messy divorce and custody battle over their four children, Johnny Wall's defense attorneys maintain that von Schwedler's death was either a suicide or an accident.
The 49-year-old woman's boyfriend found her submerged in a bathtub in her Sugar House home on the night of Sept. 27, 2011. She was wearing shorts, and there was blood in her bedroom, at the edge of the bathroom sink and on a windowsill, according to an autopsy report.
The state medical examiner's office found that von Schwedler died from drowning, but could not determine whether the manner of her death was homicide, suicide or accidental.
She had a fatal or near-fatal amount of Xanax in her system prior to her death, according to court records.
Judge James Blanch read from a stipulation Wednesday that said none of von Schwedler's children nor her boyfriend had a prescription for the drug. And von Schwedler herself did not have a prescription, according to previous testimony by her physicians.
Lynn Hooper, an investigator with the Utah Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing, testified Wednesday that Wall had written a Xanax prescription for his mother in May 2011. Hooper said Wall picked up the prescription himself at a Murray pharmacy. He said that no Utah patient records could be found for Wall's mother, who lived in California at the time.
In other testimony on Thursday, Anthony Izarraras told jurors Thursday that Johnny Wall brought his car into the car wash where Izarraras worked on the morning of Sept. 27, 2011. Izarraras said the customer asked him to pay special attention to lightish pink, drip-like stains behind the driver's seat.
Johnny Wall was "just anxious" that day, Izarraras said, and it struck him as a "little odd" that the man wanted his car detailed, since the car was relatively clean.
After Johnny Wall had his car cleaned, he came to work later than usual. Medical assistant Katie Grell said she immediately noticed the scratch on the doctor's eye.
"He didn't look showered or shaved," Grell said. "He told me that he was sleeping outside with his dog and that alarm must have gone off and startled Molly."
Grell said the doctor left work for the rest of the day, and did not return to work for several more weeks. But when he did come back, she said his mood had changed.
"He was like his old self again," she said. "Like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders."
Wall faces up to life in prison if convicted. He has been held in the Salt Lake County jail in lieu of $1.5 million cash-only bail.
Twitter: @jm_miller