Jury shown graphic photos
Defence questions witness at Anne Norris trial , asks if he was drunk when he gave information to police
Anne Norris watched on a screen meant specifically for her as RNC forensic identification officer Cynthia Crocker went through a series of crime scene photos for the court Friday, describing the gruesome scene she had documented the morning Marcel Reardon’s body was found.
Blood spatter. Muddy footprints. Disturbances in the grass and dirt indicating something had been dragged. More blood, and brain matter and bone fragments.
It wasn’t until images of Reardon’s face and head, bearing horrendous injuries — which Norris has admitted she inflicted with a hammer — appeared on the screen that Norris began to audibly sob into a tissue.
Friday marked the end of the first week of Norris’s firstdegree murder trial, which has so far seen Crown prosecutors Jeff Summers and Iain Hollett call 11 witnesses to the stand. Crocker, a seven-year member of the RNC’S forensic identification unit, was the 11th to testify.
She and colleague Pamela Pike had been called to Harbour View Apartments on Brazil Street in St. John’s around 10 a.m. on May 9, 2016, after a tenant in the building had exited a back door and discovered Reardon’s body underneath the concrete step.
Using her photos, Crocker explained what she and Pike had noticed. There were two indentations in the ground, the furthest one about eight-anda-half feet from the body, with what she described as streaks of blood, bone and brain matter leading to Reardon. The grass was matted down, Crocker said, “as if someone had passed through the grass, bloodied that strip of grass and under the concrete steps where the body was.” There were disturbances in the dirt and mud in linear streaks leading to Reardon’s feet as well, she said.
Reardon’s T-shirt and hoodie had been bunched up, exposing skin, and there was grass and dirt wedged under his belt buckle, Crocker said. There was mud on the back of his hoodie and jeans.
On the wall of the apartment building adjacent to the indentations, there was an arc of blood spatter reaching about as high as the top of a ground floor window. There was a shoe print in the mud and debris scattered on the ground: a pink lighter, cigarette butts, an empty cigarette package and a beer bottle. It was all processed as evidence.
In the subsequent days, Crocker processed the inside of Norris’s apartment as well, photographing items, swabbing for DNA, packaging evidence and using chemical processes to check for the presence of bodily fluids.
The court has already heard Reardon’s blood was detected on a scarf, bathrobe, socks and sneakers belonging to Norris
and located in the apartment, and Norris has said she was wearing them the night she killed Reardon.
“Did you obtain this note during your search of the apartment?” Hollett asked Crocker, presenting her with a copy of a note scrawled on the back of a business card that building superintendent Jack Huffman told the court earlier in the week he had found while cleaning Norris’s apartment after police were done with it. “Annie, I miss you,” the note reads. “I was here 9:30. Call me Sweetie.” It’s signed “Derick,” which Huffman testified was the name of a tenant who was evicted and banned from the apartment building before Norris moved in.
Norris had told building management the guy wasn’t her boyfriend, but more like a stalker and had left a note on her door.
Crocker appeared surprised, saying she’d never seen the note before.
“That’s the first time I’ve seen it. It was not in the apartment
when we searched,” she said.
The note was submitted to the court by Norris’s lawyers, Jerome Kennedy and Rosellen Sullivan, who argue Norris is not criminally responsible for Reardon’s death due to a severe mental illness, which included extreme paranoia.
They have presented evidence that Norris suffers from bipolar disorder and psychosis, and she had made a number of complaints to police from 2011 to 2016 saying people were breaking into her home and sexually assaulting her while she slept, though she had never woken up during the attacks and couldn’t provide details. The reports were all unsubstantiated, and her family members told police at various times they believed Norris was delusional.
Kennedy and Sullivan say Norris was unwell and incapable of understanding what she was doing when she purchased a hammer and used it to kill Reardon after a day and night of panhandling and drinking downtown with Reardon and two others, Jessica Peach and
Kevin O’brien.
The lawyers have presented evidence to show Reardon was drunk and aggressive in the 24 hours before he died, and have suggested he may have gotten aggressive toward Norris.
Summers and Hollett say Norris planned Reardon’s death, murdered him and purposely hid the evidence, and knew full well what she was doing.
Peach and O’brien have both testified Norris seemed fine that day, and hadn’t had much to drink. O’brien gave details of going with Norris to her apartment to hang out for an hour, then returning downtown. She later took Reardon back to her apartment in a taxi, O’brien said, but returned alone around 3 a.m. She then asked him to go with her on a walk by the waterfront, where she threw a backpack over the pier. O’brien said she was adamant the pair wait and watch it sink.
The backpack, recovered days later and turned over to police, contained the hammer used to kill Reardon, among other items.
Friday morning, Sullivan cross-examined O’brien, questioning him on his multiple statements to police and at the preliminary inquiry. Video evidence shows Norris had left her friends and gone to Walmart, where she purchased the hammer, then returned. O’brien’s statements didn’t mention this, Sullivan pointed out.
“There were a lot of people coming and going. I wasn’t keeping track of where they went and when they came back,” O’brien replied.
“You did not recall that she had gone for a two-hour period?” Sullivan countered.
“I wasn’t keeping track. Why would I?” O’brien responded. “I didn’t have a GPS on her or anything.”
Later, Sullivan questioned O’brien on his drinking, asking him if he considered himself an alcoholic and asking if he had been drunk when he gave his statements to police.
“I guess so,” O’brien answered to the first question, but said he wasn’t intoxicated when he gave his statements, despite having made a statement to that effect previously.
Regarding the ditching of the backpack, Sullivan pointed out Norris had asked O’brien to come with her to the waterfront instead of going alone.
O’brien told the court he wasn’t aware that Norris was a murder suspect when he spoke to police in the beginning, but had figured it out after a few days.
“I put two and two together, thinking about what happened, how she and Marcel had left together, but only she came back, and the throwing of the backpack into the ocean,” O’brien said.
Pike is scheduled to take the witness stand when Norris’s trial resumes Monday morning.