Linda Duffey and the Bugs Bunny Defense: Forensics, Verdict, Appeals

The Bugs Bunny defense in the Linda Duffey case was her claim that she accidentally shot her husband Patrick in April 2007 while the couple were mimicking Looney Tunes voices and she tried to “fan fire” a revolver she believed was unloaded. It did not save her. A first jury deadlocked, but a second jury, which never heard the cartoon story, convicted her of second-degree murder in January 2015, and she was sentenced to 40 years to life.

The Story She Told Police

Patrick Duffey, 50, a radio engineer and gun enthusiast, was found dead on the couch in the couple’s Whittier-area home on April 26, 2007. Linda called 911 at 2:07 p.m. and said, “My husband was gonna go shooting … and I accidentally shot him.”¹

According to Patrick’s sister, the couple often joked in the voices of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Elmer Fudd. Linda told detectives that just before the shooting, Patrick used an Elmer Fudd voice to say “no more buwwets,” which she took to mean their .38-caliber revolver was empty. To impress him, she said, she tried to fan fire the gun, a rapid-shooting technique from old westerns in which the shooter slaps the hammer with one hand while holding down the trigger with the other. The gun went off, she told police, and it was an accident.²

CBS News correspondent Richard Schlesinger later described the account as likely unique in American legal history.³ At least one veteran detective initially found it plausible enough that Linda was released without charges.

Why the Forensics Broke the Story

The autopsy revealed the first major problem: Patrick had been shot twice in the head, not once. At the scene, his left hand was in his pocket and his right knee was propped on a pillow.⁴

Firearms expert Tracy Peck examined the weapon and found it was a double-action revolver, a type not designed to be fan fired. In a double-action revolver, the trigger has to be pulled and released for every shot, so the cylinder does not advance from slapping the hammer alone. Peck concluded that for an amateur to fire two closely grouped head shots by accident using that technique was “next to impossible.”¹

Blood spatter analyst Paul Delhauer added another layer. He testified that the barrel would have needed to be within three inches of Patrick’s head to produce the spatter pattern investigators recorded, and that the second shot should have sent “jets of blood” onto the shooter. Linda had very little blood on her clothes. Delhauer concluded the shots were fired while Patrick was sleeping.¹

Her story also shifted. In a January 2009 interview, after detectives showed her a video of Peck trying to fan fire the revolver, Linda added a new detail: that she and Patrick had practiced the maneuver with an unloaded gun 15 to 20 times over the years. Investigators were not persuaded.

Witnesses filled in more. A longtime friend, Julie Prendergast, described Linda as a compulsive liar who once claimed to have had her gallbladder removed three times. Patrick’s sister, Katherine Hunt, said Linda gave conflicting accounts on the day of the shooting: an accident to 911, a self-inflicted shooting to relatives. At a funeral home, Hunt said, she asked Linda directly whether she had shot Patrick, and Linda answered, “Yes.”¹

By 2012, five years after the shooting, Linda had moved to Mississippi and remarried, taking the surname Gwozdz. Sheriff’s homicide detectives and a U.S. Marshals task force arrested her at her home in Hattiesburg on May 22, 2012.⁵

Why the Defense Worked Once and Failed Once

Defense attorney Joseph Low built the first trial around the accident narrative. Jurors heard three recorded police interviews in which Linda described the cartoon routine and the fan-firing technique. The couple’s teenage sons, Sean and Thomas Duffey, testified that their parents had a happy, joking relationship. Low also challenged the credentials of the prosecution’s blood spatter expert.¹ The jury deadlocked, and the judge declared a mistrial.

For the retrial, Deputy District Attorney Robert Villa made a decisive change. He did not introduce the taped police interviews. Without those recordings in evidence, the defense could not put the “Bugs Bunny” account before the jury unless Linda testified herself. She did not.¹

Low held on to a narrow opening. The prosecution introduced the 911 transcript, which mentioned fan firing, and that let Low call firearms expert Lance Martini, who testified that fan firing a double-action revolver was uncommon but “humanly possible,” with multiple rounds possible in under a second. Low used a courtroom sofa to demonstrate the couple’s playfulness and called the investigating detectives to acknowledge their initial belief that the shooting was accidental.

Villa’s case was stripped down to what he called an execution: two head wounds on a man who appeared to have been asleep. “Two shots is not an accident,” he said. “All I needed to see was the way he was laying on the couch and two holes in his head.”⁶

On January 23, 2015, the Norwalk Superior Court jury found Linda Doreen Gwozdz guilty of second-degree murder and found true the allegation that she “personally and intentionally discharged a firearm, causing great bodily injury and death.”⁷ Jurors said afterward that hearing the full cartoon account from the police interviews might have affected their deliberations.

Sentence and Appeals

On April 24, 2015, Gwozdz was sentenced to 40 years to life in state prison.⁴ At sentencing, she said, “This was a horrible accident, and I’ve been aware of everyone’s pain from day one.”⁶ Villa acknowledged that the motive was never fully established, though the prosecution theorized that the marriage was strained and that Linda did not want to provide long-term care for Patrick, who had chronic circulation problems.

A state appeals court upheld the conviction after the defense challenged the trial judge’s exclusion of certain statements Linda made to a detective at the scene, ruling that the defense had failed to make a proper offer of proof at trial. The California Supreme Court declined to review the case.⁶

Gwozdz later sought resentencing under a state law affecting certain murder convictions. A lower court denied that request in July 2024, ruling the case final. On November 6, 2025, a panel of California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal dismissed her latest appeal for lack of jurisdiction.⁸ She has remained incarcerated since her May 2012 arrest.

1
CBS News. 48 Hours Investigates the Shooting Death of Patrick Duffey
2
Paramount Press Express. 48 Hours: The Bugs Bunny Defense
3
CBS News. 48 Hours: The Bugs Bunny Defense
4
LA County District Attorney’s Office. Woman Sentenced to Prison for Fatally Shooting Husband
5
San Gabriel Valley Tribune. Woman Arrested in Mississippi on Suspicion of Murdering Husband in Whittier
6
Patch. Conviction Upheld in Husband’s Shooting Death
7
Whittier Daily News. Woman Guilty of Murder in Husband’s Shooting Death in South Whittier
8
MyNewsLA. Appeal Dismissed in Case of Woman Convicted of Husband’s Shooting Death