BRATTLEBORO -- Emmy Bascom was brutally murdered two years ago in Wardsboro, and a recent acquaintance is about to stand trial for her death.
On Thursday, both the prosecution and defense asked Judge John Treadwell for some guidance on how many of the the autopsy photographs should be shown to the jury, and how big they should be, and whether the photographs should be shown in open court.
Bascom, 42, who lived with her husband and four children in her hometown of Guilford, suffered "horrific" injuries, according to Daniel Sedon, the attorney who is representing Cara Rodrigues, 33, of Wardsboro. The two women had recently struck up a friendship, with Bascom driving her around Windham County, even as she admitted she didn't really know Rodrigues' name.
Sedon, one of the state's top defense attorneys, said that Bascom suffered 132 stab wounds, 125 blunt-force trauma injuries, and six broken bones, in the Aug. 8, 2022 attack.
There was an injury on "every inch of her body," Sedon told Windham Superior Court Judge John Treadwell, "from her head to her toes."
Sedon said the autopsy was "one of the worst" he had ever seen in his career.
Interim Windham County State's Attorney Steve Brown and Sedon both asked the judge for some guidance on how to handle the horrific nature of the autopsy photographs, which both said had to be an important part of the trial.
Brown said he had selected 15 photographs, but that they were all horrible.
Six members of Bascom's family attended Thursday's all day of various pending motions in the second degree murder case. Her father left the courtroom during the late afternoon discussion of the autopsy photographs.
The judge made no decision on the autopsy photographs, and other pre-trial issues. Both Sedon and Brown said they were concerned the autopsy photos would be extremely difficult for the jury to see.
Sedon at one point suggested that the medical examiner who did the autopsy just describe the injuries, and that the photographs not be shown in open court, but sent to the jury during deliberations in their room.
But Brown said that words were not adequate to convey the attack on Bascom, who had only known Rodrigues a few weeks before she was murdered.
The two women were together around midnight on Aug. 8, when Rodrigues overdosed in Bascom's SUV parked at The Marina Restaurant. Brattleboro police were able to revive Rodrigues, who had snorted a white powder, using CPR and Narcan.
But a little more than four hours later, Bascom was likely dead, as Rodrigues showed up at her mother's door early that morning, "covered in blood" in her own words and without Bascom, her mother told investigators.
Earlier in the day, Brown played some video recordings made of Rodrigues while she was being held at the Vermont State Police barracks in Westminster, the day after Bascom's body was found at a log landing on a backroad in Wardsboro.
Sedon had filed a motion to suppress statements Rodrigues had made to the state police detectives, saying that while she did sign a waiver of her Miranda rights an an "X," while saying she didn't know her real name, the police had ignored her request to make a phone call for 10 hours.
Sedon said that as a result, what Rodrigues said during that 20 minute interview should be thrown out, since it was coerced.
Sedon said that police detectives should have called an attorney for Rodrigues immediately after she said she wanted to "make a phone call" shortly after she was taken to the Westminster barracks.
Instead, he argued, she asked to make a phone call to a lawyer four times, before she relented "and bangs on the door and says 'I'll talk,'" he said. As a result, he said, her statement was involuntary.
At one point in the video recording, Rodrigues again asks the detectives to let her make a phone call.
"Who would you like to call?" one of the detectives asks.
"I don't have to tell you," she snaps. "You better let me go."
Rodrigues, who suffered a miscarriage either during or before the questioning according to Sedon, never received adequate medical care from the police, while she was being held in a cell. She told police she was bleeding vaginally, and the white Tyvek suit police put her in after they confiscated her original clothing was stained with her blood.
Police had earlier taken her clothes and photographed Rodrigues' injuries, which included a knot on her head and cuts on her legs.
Rodrigues told police she had been drugged by Bascom's friend and drug dealer "Buck," and that the police detectives were working for her father and would kill her.
According to the recording, Rodrigues said little about Bascom, as she ignored the detectives' questions about what had happened to "Emmy," whose body was found a short distance from the home where Rodrigues was living.
When Rodrigues was discovered burglarizing a neighbor's house, she was wearing blood-stained clothes.
And according to testimony on Thursday, she showed up at her mother's Wardsboro home early that morning, and told her mother she was "covered in blood."
"'I saw someone do something horrible,'" Rodrigues allegedly told her mother.
Her mother, Laura Slade, had repeatedly called state police and 911 in the days leading up to Bascom's death, warning police that her daughter had had a "break" and was threatening to kill people.
She was in fear for her life, Slade told police.
Windham County Deputy State's Attorney Dana Nevins said that Slade's calls to the police came within a couple of days of Bascom's murder, and thus were relevant and should be used in the trial.
Sedon, in a counter motion, is trying to limit Slade's testimony, saying that Slade was not a mental health professional and was not qualified to say that Rodrigues had had a psychotic break.
Rodrigues had repeatedly yelled, screamed, cried, sobbed and swore while she was being held in isolation at the barracks, and the detectives told her she was under arrest for some house burglaries in Wardsboro the same day as Bascom's body was found. The detectives told Rodrigues she was being investigated for any connection to the homicide.
It was revealed Thursday that a hunting knife, which could be the murder weapon, was discovered a year after the murder, in a drained beaver pond in the woods near Rodrigues home. The knife was found about 20 feet away from a backpack Rodrigues was wearing the day before the murder. The backpack was found a few weeks after the murder.
DNA tests on the knife revealed a match to the man who found it and turned it over to police, but not to either Bascom or Rodrigues. Sedon said he only learned of test results as he was driving to Brattleboro that morning, and he objected to the state's continuing investigation of the case.
At one point, Treadwell questioned Rodrigues whether she was waiving her constitutional right to question a state's witness in the case, since the man lives in Texas and is not available for the trial.
Rodrigues agreed to let James Galbraith testify remotely. It was his home where she was found that night by police.
Brown also disclosed that despite numerous attempts, investigators have been unable to "unlock" Bascom's iPhone. Technical investigators have estimated that it could take anywhere from "a few months to 24 years" to unlock the information in the phone, Brown said, which could have a profound effect on the case. Work is continuing on the phone, he said.
Jury selection is slated to begin Oct. 14. Treadwell said that he had misspoke earlier in the week when he said the potential jury pool was down to 127 people. The current number is more than 150, he said.
Contact Susan Smallheer at ssmallheer@reformer.com.