Former sex partner describes scary moments with accused Zocco

Witness: ‘I knew I was in danger’ in last meeting

An anonymous witness told jurors at Kris Zocco’s homicide trial that he was her “dom” and she was his “sub” for a year of weekly sessions during which, almost every time, she’d nearly pass out from being choked during aggressive oral sex.

Prosecutors believe Kelly Dwyer, 27, died during a similar episode at Zocco’s apartment in fall 2013, and that he sneaked her body to his car in a golf travel bag and hid it in rural Jefferson County, where her skeletal remains weren’t found until May 2015.

The woman, identified by court order only as Ms. C, took the witness stand late Wednesday, before the state rested and defense presented its evidence Thursday.

Ms. C said she met Zocco, 43, in October 2011 when he replied to her ad in the casual encounter section of Craigslist, seeking a dominant-submissive relationship.

Before then, she said, she’d been in an abusive relationship and thought being a submissive “would work for me because I was weak.”

They always met at her apartment and she said she never learned his last name, address or phone number, communicating only by email.

She said Zocco at first would respond to her tap for safety and “give me my breath back” when she had reached “the edge.” But in later sessions he did not and that she would frantically struggle to get free from his grasp or, often, bindings on her hands and ankles. Sometimes, she said, he would pinch her nose to further limit her breathing.

Ultimately, she told jurors, she’d began to pass out, lose focus in her vision and fall weak and dizzy to the floor, gasping for air.

Yet she continued the sex-only relationship because “when I’d get my air back, he’d highly praise me and give me lots of validation and self-worth, saying I did a good job and he really wanted me, which was kind of what I was going for.”

But in November 2012, she said, she abruptly stopped seeing Zocco after he came to her home and engaged in anal sex against her consent.

“Kris’ voice was very different then,” Ms. C said. “It was a haunting, ‘Silence of the Lambs’-type voice. I knew I was in danger,” so she opted not to resist.

The state rested Thursday and announced it was dropping a recent charge that Zocco solicited someone to intimidate a prior girlfriend, possibly Ms. C, from testifying at his trial.

For the defense, Forthune Hasan testified that on Oct. 14, 2013, two days after Dwyer went missing and when her image had begun appearing in media reports, he went to the District 3 police station to report he had seen her in the passenger seat of a car on Saturday. He said he saw her twice, at two stop lights, and then followed the car she was in and took the license number.

“I was sure it was her,” he testified. “She looked exactly like the girl on TV.” He described her as unmoving, not reacting to his attempts to make eye contact.

The report was never followed up on, detectives later admitted, until Hasan appeared on Zocco’s witness list. A detective revisited him last week and showed him a surveillance picture of Dwyer, not the photo on the missing person flyers from 2013. In rebuttal for the state, Detective Matt Bell said Hasan told him Sept. 29 that he wasn’t sure the picture was who he saw.

The defense also presented evidence about cameras and video from Zocco’s apartment building that was not reviewed or preserved by police, and how a copy of Dwyer’s computer was corrupted and missing six gigabytes of data.

Zocco did not testify. Closing arguments in his trial on charges of first-degree reckless homicide, hiding a corpse and strangulation are expected Friday.