Gauthier case to go before grand jury in 2019

Defense lawyer in 2016 stabbing says prosecutors unlikely to present this month

WOONSOCKET — A lawyer for one of the defendants accused in the grisly 2016 stabbing death of octogenarian Constance Gauthier says he does not expect state prosecutors to present the case to a grand jury until sometime next month.

A bail hearing for Matthew Dusseault, 21, had tentatively been scheduled for next week, but defense counsel John Calcagni III said he would probably hold off until after a grand jury is seated before considering his options.

Nearly five months have passed since Dusseault and Tyler Grenon, 24, were charged by the Woonsocket Police Department in connection with the killing of Gauthier, 81, the chairwoman of the personnel board. Her body was found

amid signs of the struggle in the bedroom of her stone bungalow at 191 Fairfield Ave. on March 23, 2016. She'd been stabbed 68 times in head, neck and torso with two different knives, according to police affidavits filed in the case.

Dusseault and Grenon are charged with one count each of first-degree murder and conspiracy in Gauthier's death.

Grenon, who was living next door to Gauthier at the time of the killing, is free on bail and presently living in Attleboro. Dusseault, of 101 Cote Ave., has been held without bail at the Adult Correctional since the two men were arrested on July 17.

Under the rules of criminal procedure, Calcagni said his client is entitled to ask the court for bail if the state has not secured a grand jury indictment against him within six months of his arrest. He is also entitled to petition the court for a dismissal of the charges.

Calcagni said he is waiting for the state to follow through on its intentions to seek an indictment against his client before considering his next move, however.

Deputy Police Chief Michael Lemoine acknowledged that the case against Dusseault and Grenon has not yet been presented to a grand jury – but it will be soon. Since the two men were arrested, Lemoine said, police have continued to develop evidence at the direction of state prosecutors with the intent of presenting the strongest possible case to grand jurors.

“An investigation of this magnitude is always in motion,” said Lemoine. “We have continuously been following up with state prosecutors to meet their needs.”

Grenon had long been on the police department's radar as a possible suspect in the case – taking him into custody three days after the homicide on unrelated charges after he allegedly asked several neighbors to examine footage from their home surveillance cameras. He later escaped from police custody when he was taken in for questioning, causing police to charge him with obstructing and witness intimidation, but the charges were later withdrawn.

The arrest of the two men for murder came about after police tried a novel avenue of forensic examination involving techniques known as genetic genealogy and genetic phenotyping. Using the private, Virginia-based Parabon NanoLabs Inc., police developed a composite sketch of an unknown suspect whose DNA was found intermingled with Gauthier's at the crime scene, according to affidavits filed in the case.

Police had been in possession of the unknown suspect's profile for some time without the ability to link it to a name. This spring, however, detectives began searching for a match in a Parabon database of known DNA profiles that was originally established for genealogical research. The effort led initially led to Dusseault's mother, Paula Gauthier (no relation to Constance), indicating that the source of the unknown DNA sample was either her father or her son.

The technique was so new it made national news for the first time a couple of months earlier, when California police used it to arrest the Golden Gate Killer – a man in his 70s who'd been at large despite having committed a dozen homicides and scores of rapes that occurred 30 to 40 years ago.

While Dusseault is tied to the crime scene through hard evidence, a judge set bail for Grenon at $50,000 with surety, or $5,000 cash, after his lawyers argued that it was only Dusseault's word that implicates him in the crime. Also, he has no prior criminal convictions.