The 19-year-old male prostitute is facing life in prison for stabbing WABC newscaster George Weber 50 times during a kinky sex romp in the newsman’s Carroll Gardens home after being convicted last Tuesday.
Last year, a lone holdout resisisted convicting John Katehis after two and a half days of deliberation, setting up this month’s dramatic retrial.
This time, it took less than a day for a new jury to find Katehis guilty of butchering Weber, a regular commentator on WABC’s “Curtis and Kuby” program starring Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa.
Katehis met Weber in March, 2009, through a Craigslist ad. The teen agreed to come to the older man’s apartment on Henry Street between Carroll and President streets, with the intention of being paid for sex.
Several hours later, Weber was found dead. Cops quickly captured Katehis.
But Katehis’s attorneys claim that the teen was defending himself after Weber plied him with booze and cocaine — and then demanded rough sex.
And Katehis said that things got out of control only after Weber pulled a knife.
“I got paranoid. I went to grab the knife; he was supposed to be smothered, not [do] something with a knife,” Katehis said before pointing to his throat. “The knife just goes in and jabs him in the neck.”
Katehis claimed he stabbed Weber once, but a city medical examiner determined that the newscaster had been stabbed dozens of times.
Katehis’s defense adopted the same strategy in the retrial, but the jury heard new — and overwhelming — evidence of the brutality of the stabbing.
Katehis is set for sentencing on Dec. 7.
Reach reporter Thomas Tracy at ttracy@cnglocal.com or by calling (718) 260-2525.
