Attorney has no witnesses, DNA in Rakes trial
The lawyer for a Sudbury man accused of fatally poisoning his friend and creditor Stephen “Stippo” Rakes told jurors yesterday they will hear from no eyewitnesses and see no DNA evidence, as he sought to counter admissions of guilt and evidence of efforts to buy cyanide the prosecution intends to present.
The admissions were made at Massachusetts General Hospital while William Camuti was drugged, “in shock and going in and out of consciousness” after slitting his wrists days after Rakes’ killing, defense attorney Brad Bailey told a jury of 10 women and six men.
“They were not made voluntarily, freely or rationally,” but instead while police were taking advantage of his condition, Bailey said in his opening argument.
Camuti, 72, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, improper disposal of a body, and two counts of lying to police in connection with Rakes’ death on July 16, 2013. Federal prosecutors had told Rakes, 59, the same day that he would not be called to testify against mobster James “Whitey” Bulger for extorting Rakes’ South Boston liquor store from him 29 years earlier.
Later that day, cops say, Rakes drove to a McDonald’s in Waltham, where Camuti, who owed him more than $100,000, served him an iced coffee laced with cyanide — the poison the state medical examiner later found in the victim’s body, said Assistant District Attorney Adrienne C. Lynch.
“Mr. Camuti had no intention of paying that money back, nor could he,” Lynch said. “So on July 16, Mr. Camuti chose to eliminate his largest creditor.”
Outside the McDonald’s, Rakes got into Camuti’s vehicle, she said, “and that was the last time anyone saw him alive or would ever hear from him.”
Shortly before 9 p.m., Lynch said, the GPS on Camuti’s vehicle showed him stopped in the Lincoln woods where a jogger found Rakes’ body the next day.
After Camuti’s cell number turned up on Rakes’ phone records, she said, police used a warrant to search Camuti’s apartment, where they found messages inquiring about buying cyanide, Lynch said. Camuti initially denied buying the poison but later changed his story, she said.
While Bailey acknowledged his client had financial problems, he said Rakes had offered him a way out through proposed real estate deals at the same time he was shopping around a multimillionsettlement he had received in the Bulger case.
The trial resumes today and is expected to last three weeks.