Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
THE FRESH SMELL OF DEATH
Lucas Nikolakopoulos, age 3, of West Palm Beach, does not enjoy the smell during a photo with his mom, Charlene, in front of an amorphophallus titanium, or corpse flower, at Tropical Bamboo Nursery and Gardens in Loxahatchee. Nicknamed “Pepé Le Pew” by nursery staff, there are only a handful of corpse flowers around the world outside
its native Indonesia, and the last bloom in South Florida was in 2014 at the same nursery.
It sounded like fireworks after the thrilling end of the Super Bowl on Feb. 5, 2017.
But it was rapid gunfire from the backyard of 1105 Mohawk Street in Jupiter, and within a few moments three young people were dead.
This violent scene — described for a Palm Beach County jury on Tuesday — will be revisited over the next two weeks for the triple-murder trial of Christopher Vasata, 26.
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Vasata in the deaths of Kelli J. Doherty, 20, of Tequesta, Brandi El-Salhy, 24, of Gainesville, and Sean P. Henry, 26, of Jupiter.
Marcus Steward, 26, also is charged in the killings, but his death penalty trial is yet to be scheduled.
It took the lawyers and Circuit Judge Joseph Marx eight days to screen nearly 400 prospective jurors to find a panel to hear the case against Vasata. The Jupiter man is charged with three counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder.
If convicted of the murder counts, the trial then would proceed to a penalty phase, where it would take a unanimous vote of the 12 jurors to produce a death sentence.
Four men and 10 women were selected for the jury Tuesday morning; two of them are alternate jurors.
In their opening statements, prosecutor Chrichet Mixon and defense attorney Elizabeth Ramsey agreed only that the two women, El-Salhy and Doherty, were innocent victims of violent plans hatched by others.
The case involves allegations of major drug and weapons dealings and murder plots, resulting in the tragic loss of life on a night when many Americans were enjoying Super Bowl Sunday festivities.
Mixon said Vasata and Steward spent the day plotting the murders of Henry and Charlie Vorpagel, a now-convicted felon who rented the house where the shootings happened just before 10:30 p.m.
The prosecutor said Vorpagel, 29, had invited Henry and the women for socializing over beer and cocaine, but the night was interrupted when “masked gunmen appeared with guns blazing.”
Vorpagel escaped the backyard unharmed by climbing a fence, but Henry, El-Salhy and Doherty were slaughtered by a hail of bullets, Mixon said. Later, the jurors looked at photographs of the crime scene, including images of the victims’ bodies.
Minutes after the shootings and one mile away from the house, Palm Beach County Sheriff’s deputies attempted to stop a sedan for traffic violations. Before the car sped away, deputies noticed a man had exited the car bleeding from gunshots.
This was Christopher Vasata, who then told them he was wounded at his friend’s house.
“He was not at the house as a guest of Charlie Vorpagel,” Mixon said. She explained Vasata had been accidentally shot by Steward, and Steward then drove them in Henry’s car from the crime scene and dropped Vasata next to a BMW that Vasata had been using.
Mixon said detectives the next morning recovered the murder weapons — a rifle and a Glock pistol — from an Interstate 95 culvert near the abandoned getaway car.
The weapons matched bullets recovered from the victims and casings in the backyard, Mixon said. She also promised the jury will receive evidence that Vasata’s DNA matched blood in Henry’s car.
Vorpagel, a key witness for the prosecution, is now serving a 10-year federal prison sentence for drug and gun convictions that resulted after cops searched his Mohawk Street home after the killings.
“He was held accountable for what was found in the search,” Mixon said.
The defense was quick to discredit Vorpagel, while casting blame for the killings on another man who was never charged or identified as a suspect in the case.
Assistant Public Defender Ramsey also portrayed Vasata, her client, as a peacemaker who simply wanted to defuse a feud that Vorpagel and Henry were having with a drug dealer whom Ramsey labeled as a gunman.
Ramsey called Henry, one of the three victims, a “business” partner in Vorpagel’s criminal enterprise of guns and drugs. She said the two were close since childhood.
The attorney said Vorpagel and Henry were making plans to target the other drug dealer, when Vasata, the drug dealer’s friend, wanted to try to get these enemies to settle their differences without violence.
Vasata, Steward and the other drug dealer went to Vorpagel’s home that night, but “no one knew Brandi and Kelli would be there,” Ramsey said.
And Vasata, for all of his good intentions, wound up getting shot too, his attorney noted. She said Vasata was shot not by Steward, but by the other gunman who accompanied them that night. Vasata was hospitalized but made a full recovery.
“Mr. Vasata did not go to that residence with the intent of committing any violent act at all,” Ramsey said. “Mr. Vasata went there to try to stop an outof-control plan launched by Mr. Vorpagel and by Sean Henry.”