Mistrial in Main Line handcuff case

WEST CHESTER » The Common Pleas Court jury hearing the case of a former Main Line man accused of handcuffing and suffocating his then-girlfriend failed to reach a verdict on all of the charges against him after a weeklong trial that featured multiple disputes over what evidence the panel should receive.

After about eight hours of deliberations, the jury of six men and six women told Judge Patrick Carmody that they could not reach a unanimous decision on whether David Bookstaber was guilty or not guilty on charges of unlawful restraint, false imprisonment, and simple assault

However, the jury did acquit Bookstaber on the felony charge of strangulation and another count of simple assault.

Carmody declared a mistrial around 1 a.m. Saturday after the jury reported that they were hung on the three charges. It is unclear whether the Chester County District Attorney’s Office will see to retry the case in 2021.

The trial involved accusations that Bookstaber forcibly restrained the woman with whom he was living in December 2018 after they began arguing and put her in handcuffs. Authorities said he then held her down on a bed for more than five hours while she desperately tried to get free, and several times put a pillow over her face to muffle her cries for help.

But Bookstaber’s defense was that his actions — he admitted to both handcuffing the woman and putting a pillow on her face

— were justified because he was trying to stop her from hurting herself or him. His girlfriend, he told police the day of his arrest, had a history of emotional turmoil that included episodes of rage.

The case — essentially accusations of domestic violence that, while serious, might not otherwise have created much of a ripple in the Chester County legal world — has drawn attention because of the connection the defendant has to another, yet unresolved, crime.

A Yale graduate and former marksman with the U.S. Air Force, Bookstaber has been identified in court documents as a “person of interest” in a homicide investigation involving a 62-year-old widow, Denise Barger, who was found dead in her Tredyffrin home in June 2016. She lived alone, in a house next to where Bookstaber and his family lived at the time.

In a search warrant issued by Chester County Detectives at the time, police said they found a trail of blood from Barger’s bedroom on the second floor of her home, down a set of stairs, out a rear door, and across a yard towards Bookstaber’s home on Heatherstone Drive. He has not been charged with any crime in the case, which is still under investigation.

Bookstaber, 44, had had confrontations with Barger in the months leading up to her death, partially over her complaints about gunfire coming from the woods behind his house.

The assault case against him also has as a backdrop the on-again, off-again, onagain accusations of Bookstaber’s former girlfriend, Alicia Rosato. She first accused Bookstaber of assaulting her, then recanted that accusation to say that he was acting out of concern for her mental stability and trying to keep her from harming herself. But then she took back that stance, telling investigators over the summer that he had coached her in how to recant, promising

to continue the financial support he was giving her.

Carmody, during jury selection on Monday, referred to the couple’s romance as “a daytime soap opera relationship.” They began dating in 2018 after Bookstaber’s wife filed for divorce, lived together at Bookstaber’s rented home in Paoli, and broke up after the handcuffing incident. They then reconciled in March 2018 and lived together at various locations in New York and Pennsylvania until Bookstaber finally ended their relationship while they lived in a rented suite at a Montgomery County hotel.

The trial was extended throughout the week by arguments between the prosecution and defense over what the jury should learn about Rosato’s past, including psychiatric treatment she had received before and after the incident. Carmody, who has overseen the case since it was brought to Common Pleas Court in 2019, showed his exasperation on several occasions with the legal wrangling that took place outside the jury’s view.

“This was a very simple case that had been turned into a very complex case,” he exclaimed during one argument Thursday.

Bookstaber was arrested on Dec. 5, 2018, after Rosato called Tredyffrin police to say he had handcuffed her when she began berating him for neglecting him on their “date night,” restrained her on a bed for about six hours at his home on West Golf Club Lane, and held a pillow over her mouth causing her twice to pass out.

In closing arguments Friday, the two sides presented their conf licting versions of the events that occurred the night of the handcuffing, but also argued over Rosato’s credibility, which the defense said was so conflicted that the jury could not believe her testimony about what happened that night.

In her testimony over more than six hours on Monday and Tuesday, defense attorney Joseph P. Green Jr. presented Rosato with multiple instances in which she lied to police and told friends that she was intending to file a lawsuit against Bookstaber to

get money from him.

Green maintained that Bookstaber was justified in handcuffing and restraining Rosato the night of the incident in order to protect himself from her assaults — he sustained bite on the back of his neck during the confrontation — but also to keep her from hurting herself.

“You are entitled to use force to protect yourself and others,” under the law, Green said in his closing. “David explained to police why he had handcuffed Alicia Rosato — to protect himself and to protect herself.” Green had produced a tape recording of Rosato telling Bookstaber, at some point later in their relationship, that if he did not kill her, “I’ll kill you and then myself.”

But Assistant District Attorney Michelle Thurstlic-O’Neill, who led the prosecution with Assistant District Attorney Kaitlyn Macauley, said that Green was attempting to take the focus off Bookstaber’s own behavior, which he acknowledged in police interviews, and blame Rosato, who was the “perfect victim” of his violence.

“We didn’t choose Alicia to be the victim in this case,” Thurstlic-O’Neill said. “Mr. Bookstaber did. She was weak, able to be manipulated, and if all else failed he would be able to make her look crazy. This case is about Mr. Bookstaber’s conduct, not hers.”

The prosecution noted that Rosato’s version of events was bolstered by corroborating evidence, including photos of the bruises on her wrist and back from the restraints, as well as Bookstaber’s five hour statement to Tredyffrin investigators.

“In the defendant’s own words, he equates her as his prisoner,” ThurstlicO’Neill said. Her version of events had been consistent at trial with what she initially told police, even though inconsistencies were brought to her attention.

“She didn’t come in here and try to change her story,” she said. “She stuck with what she could remember.”