The state rested its murder and racketeering case with the person closest to the victim, her only daughter.
"My mother was my best friend, my confidant," Kimberly Pack testified about April Kauffman on Friday.
She talked of a woman whose "passion" was helping veterans and who taught her daughter to always leave the house with a smile on your face because "you don't know what someone else is going through."
It was the first real glimpse jurors got into the woman who was allegedly killed to protect Dr. James Kauffman's empire and a profitable and illegal drug ring.
The doctor's alleged partner, Ferdinand "Freddy" Augello, is on trial for murder and racketeering in the case. He also is accused of trying to kill the doctor inside the Atlantic County Justice Facility, a plan that Atlantic County Prosecutor Damon Tyner previously said was the reason for the Hudson move.
Pack knew her stepfather as a cold man who refused to grant her mother a divorce and at times threatened his own life and his wife's when the subject was raised. He also lied about his military service, weaving a tale of Vietnam War service as a Green Beret that never happened.
Finding out her husband lied about his service was especially embarrassing to a woman who dedicated her life to helping veterans.
Defense attorney Omar Aguillar jumped on the ugly picture painted of Dr. Kauffman, asking Pack if the doctor could have been the killer.
"Anything is possible," she said.
"More than possible," Aguilar said. "He was a very volatile man?"
Pack agreed.
The defense started the day finishing up cross-examination of lead detective, Sgt. James Scoppa, who was questioned about a recording app that was on one of two phones the Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office purchased for confidential informant Andrew Glick.
The defense has suggested a call between Glick and former Augello co-defendant Glenn Seeler was intentionally not recorded as the two allegedly planned to blame everything on Augello.
"It was not that easy an app to use," Scoppa said, adding that he had to remind Glick how to use it several times.
Pack did not know Augello and was not asked about him or his alleged role in her mother's death.
Instead, she spoke of the woman she knew.
"Toward the end of her life, she found this group that embraced her," she said of the veterans work that earned April Kauffman the Governor's Award not long before her death.
She also said he mother told her on Feb. 3 that she had a meeting its a forensic accountant and a lawyer.
Pack said she did not know if that happened or who they were, even though she worked to find out.
The defense presented one witness, an investigator who said the area where the cell phone used to communicate with Dr. Kauffman was around the home of a relative of Glenn Seeler.
Augello told the judge that, while he wanted to defend himself, he was taking counsels' advice not to testify.
Closings are set for Tuesday.
