GILBERT DRIVEN BY JEALOUSY?
Sister, rejecting mental illness claim, suggests motive for killing mother
Stevie Smith testified Thursday that her sister, Sarra Gilbert, was jealous of the relationship between Smith and their mother, and that she believed her older sister planned to kill her, too.
“I believe her main focus was our mom, I do,” Smith said during the third day of testimony at Gilbert’s murder trial. “If she could have got to me, yes, I believe she would have killed me too.”
Gilbert, 27, has been charged with second-degree murder for the July 23, 2016, stabbing death of her mother, Mari Gilbert, 52. She has pleaded not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect.
Smith was one of three prosecution witnesses to take the stand Thursday.
For most of the day, Smith testified about her family, saying that while her sisters and mother were close, Sarra Gilbert “was never satisfied with my mother or anything she did.”
Throughout her testimony, Smith refused to look toward the defense table where Gilbert was sitting, pointing in her direction without looking at her when she was asked by Assistant District Attorney Emmanuel Nneji to point Gilbert out, and shielding her eyes to keep Gilbert out of her peripheral vision as she walked out of the courtroom.
Nneji has said Gilbert methodically planned her mother’s murder, gathering the weapons she would use when she knew her mother was headed to Gilbert’s Ellenville apartment.
On the witness stand, Smith painted a picture of her sister as a dangerous and angry drug abuser who had assaulted her mother before and was upset with both her and their mother because their mother was given custody of Sarra Gilbert’s son after Gilbert drowned a puppy in front of the child.
Smith said Gilbert was
angry with her because she was helping their mother.
Smith rejected the notion that Gilbert was mentally ill, testifying that she believed Gilbert’s “problems were self-inflicted.” But she also testified that, at one point, she thought her sister’s problems “could be a possession” and maybe in need of an exorcism.
Defense attorney John Ray told jurors in his opening statement that his client is “absolutely insane,” and that she thought her mother was an evil god. Ray said Gilbert was hallucinating and hearing voices when she stabbed her mother more than 200 times, hit her with a fire extinguisher, tried to drown her with the extinguisher’s
foam and then attempted to decapitate her.
Ray pointed to dozens of passages in a journal Smith said belonged to her sister, in which Gilbert repeatedly called Smith and her mother demons and referred to them as “husband and wife.”
In one passage, Gilbert wrote, “Mom and Stevie, husband and wife. All you did was f--- up your life. Now demons have the right to f--- up your life. This will be concluded at 5 tonight.”
In another she wrote, “Stevie and Mom, it’s time to reuinte as husband and wife. Sending the demons to f--- up your life . ... Beads won’t save you tonight. It will happen at daybreak.”
“Sarra hated the relationship Mom had with me,” Smith said.
Other passages, however, were more like song lyrics, with, Smith testified, Gilbert’s
own “twist” in talking about love and relationships. Passages included, “What’s a king baby without a queen? There ain’t no ‘i’ in team.”
Under questioning by Nneji, Smith testified that a week before their mother’s death, Gilbert, who was in the hospital for what Smith said was a drug overdose, said “she would have taken any drugs she could get [her] hands on and to worry about myself. And that was the last time I talked to Sarra.”
“Less than a week after that phone call with Sarra, my mom was dead,” Smith said.
Dr. Michael Sikirica, the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy on Mari Gilbert, said the woman was stabbed more than 200 times and on nearly every part of her body, front and back. There
were defensive wounds on her left hand, at least two stab wounds that would have been immediately fatal, and others that she could have survived, Sikirica testified.
Under questioning by Ray, Sikirica said once she was dead, Mari Gilbert’s eyes would have opened but that muscle contractions could have made it seem as though they were opening and closing. The wounds to her throat, he said under cross-examination, could have resulted in a sound being emitted.
Ray has said that Gilbert stabbed her mother 227 because she was convinced she was a demon who wouldn’t die.
Testimony in the murder trial is to resume Friday at 10 a.m., when the prosecution is expected to wrap up its case. The Freeman will live tweet the proceedings.