WORCESTER – Jurors heard closing arguments and began deliberations Thursday in the quadruple murder trial of Mathew Locke, the former Ware man accused of brutally killing his cousin’s wife and children in West Brookfield in 2018.
Prosecutors argued that evidence presented over the last three weeks of the trial — including more than 70 witnesses and 1,024 pieces of evidence — showed that Locke stabbed Sara Bermudez, 38, and her three children to death in their home at 10 at 28 Old Warren Road February 2018. , before setting their bodies on fire.
They specifically highlighted the evidence of Locke’s DNA found on the bodies of Bermudez and her 8-year-old daughter, Madison, both of whom were stabbed dozens of times and partially burned in the fire, which did not burn.
Locke’s attorney argued that prosecutors overstated the importance of the DNA evidence, accusing authorities of conducting a biased, narrowly focused investigation and providing false testimony.
He also argued that the evidence failed to establish a motive for his client, who prosecutors alleged committed the crime while high and possibly looking for money or drugs.
Locke, 38, who has been in jail since his arrest in late March 2018, sat at the defense table in formal attire as jurors listened intently to the attorneys.
Emotions high
Several jurors wiped away tears as prosecutors recalled the gruesome way the family was killed.
As Moses Bermudez, the victims’ husband and father, wiped his eyes from a packed courtroom, Assistant District Attorney Terry McLaughlin reiterated what jurors had seen — and what a doctor had described — about the damage caused by the stabbing in the private sphere of young Madison. area.
“Gone. Gone,” he said with an undertone of indignation in his voice. “No longer existed.”
The homicide prosecutor noted that Locke’s DNA matched a sample taken from Madison and was “consistent” with DNA found from Sara Bermudez.
The DNA was extracted from a sample that screened positive for amylase – an enzyme in saliva – found on the genitals of both victims.
McLaughlin paused to project a photo of Madison Bermudez’s pink underwear onto a TV screen and noted that the undergarments were found intact and separated from the bodies, which were undressed below the waist.
As jurors looked on, many with pained expressions, McLaughlin repeated a medical examiner’s testimony about bleeding that showed both Sara and Madison were alive during that attack.
As part of their verdict, jurors are tasked with considering multiple theories of first-degree murder, including, for Sara and Madison Bermudez, aggravated rape during murder, which is defined as forcible penetration with a foreign object.
They will also be asked to consider theories of premeditated murder with intentional malice aforethought, and extreme atrocities or cruelty.
McLaughlin described the gruesome injuries of the murdered brothers. Both James and Michael, he said, were stabbed so severely that some of the wounds went through their entire bodies, and the fire caused severe burns to almost all of two-year-old Michael’s tiny body.
In addition to the DNA evidence, McLaughlin also walked jurors through video surveillance. Police said it showed the vehicle Locke was driving at various points that evening on his journey from his home in Ware to West Brookfield, as well as testimony from four inmates who claimed Locke admitted wrongdoing.
McLaughlin argued that while none of the prisoners would become ‘Citizen of the Year’, some of the information they provided contained details they probably would not have known unless Locke had mentioned it.
‘Illusion of thoroughness’
Locke’s attorney, Jeffrey S. Brown, argued the opposite about the prisoners’ testimony. He told jurors that the fact that prosecutors felt the need to call such flawed witnesses highlighted a fundamental weakness in their case.
Mathew Locke’s attorney, Jeffrey S. Brown.
Brown argued that if the DNA evidence was so damning, prosecutors would not have had to bring to justice career criminals who, he argued, lacked credibility and were clearly just trying to curry favor with authorities.
The DNA evidence, he argued, was not as compelling as prosecutors made it out to be. He noted that unlike a fingerprint, the type of DNA tested was not exclusive to one person because it was a type of DNA test that only tested genetic markers through the paternal gene.
State police forensic experts had stated that this type of testing was the only kind that could be used scientifically, as the amylase was detected in an area where the overwhelming presence of female DNA made more accurate DNA testing impossible.
Brown argued that Locke, or other family members, including his son, who shares the same paternal DNA, were in or around the home more often than Moses Bermudez let on, noting that DNA can be transferred by touch or through the air.
Prosecutors have argued that burning the bodies was intended to conceal evidence, but Brown said the way diesel fuel appeared to have been poured was inconsistent with that idea.
He also argued that Locke, a frequent drug user, was not the “brightest bulb,” and suggested that if he had committed the crime, his DNA would have been found “all over” the crime scene.
In addition to questioning his client’s intelligence — he asked jurors to read Locke’s spelling in text messages — Brown admitted his dishonesty.
Locke led a hard life and sometimes lied to make ends meet, he said, suggesting that lies he told police under intense interrogations were told in the hope of getting himself out of trouble.
Being a liar, Brown said, does not prove that Locke was a murderer. Police, he claimed, had concluded Locke was guilty when the DNA match came back, and then focused on him.
Locke’s alleged agents’ investigation — especially their video examination of the car he was allegedly driving — did not prove what they said it did.
“Headlights in the dark,” he said of a video obtained near 10 Old Warren Road that police suggested showed Locke’s car. He accused police of giving misleading and in some cases false testimony, suggesting that some of the answers they gave him to his questions were not credible.
Brown also blasted prosecutors’ presentation of the voluminous evidence in the case as misleading, saying it gave off the “illusion of thoroughness.”
He suggested that none of the evidence introduced did anything to prove motive, arguing that the testimony he elicited showed that Locke had no animosity toward Moses Bermudez or his family.
Reasonable doubt
Brown concluded his argument by emphasizing that jurors must reach a unanimous verdict based on moral certainty beyond a reasonable doubt — a bar he said prosecutors had failed to meet.
Moses Bermudez testifies in front of a projection of a photo of his late wife, Sara Bermudez.
He said numerous evidentiary authorities had been ignored – including a woman who reported seeing a “glow” at the back of the house hours earlier than the time frame adopted by crime police – and drew attention to a text message sent by Moses Bermudez to received the evening of the house. the murders he testified to were strange.
Bermudez testified that the language of the message, which purportedly came from his daughter, seemed too sophisticated for her and that she had referred to her grandfather in an atypical way.
“I think this is very strong evidence that there were other things going on in this house at the time,” argued Brown, who has drawn attention to several alternative theories in recent days.
McLaughlin noted that Bermudez received the text hours before he discovered his entire family had been murdered. He noted that Bermudez’s initial statements about the text message to police — like others he made while fingering an international gang — were the statements of a heavily intoxicated father dealing with the worst kind of trauma you can imagine.
“Is there a right way for someone to act after their family has been brutally murdered?” he asked rhetorically, noting that the first night Bermudez was allowed back into his home, he decided to sleep in the bed where the murders had occurred to feel closer to those he lost.
McLaughlin urged jurors not to take authorities’ word for their opinions of the evidence but to judge it for themselves, including the footage of the car hitting Ware.
He noted that the evidence also included Facebook data showing that Sara Bermudez’s phone interacted with content on that platform until about 10 p.m.
In closing, he reviewed a litany of varying statements that Locke gave to police in the weeks after the murders, including, he said, lies tailored to adapt his story about where he was and what he was doing to new ones. evidence that the police discovered.
The truth, McLaughlin argued, is that Locke, who was extremely high on cocaine, went to his cousin’s house that night looking for money or drugs, or to settle a score, and committed a heinous crime.
As he listed several pieces of evidence in the case — from Locke’s family ties, to the DNA evidence, to the video of the car, to the lack of an alibi — he said they were “not a coincidence, they were evidence.”
He analyzed any idea that Locke’s DNA had somehow migrated to the accident scene or been planted there, or could be transferred through the air to the vagina of an 8-year-old child. It is clear, he argued, how violently it got to this point.
“This was premeditated and planned,” he said. It was extreme and cruel.
“It was premeditated murder: nothing more and certainly nothing less.”
Deliberations underway
After closing arguments, Judge Daniel M. Wrenn read jurors lengthy legal briefs to use to reach a verdict.
The sixteen-member jury – two of the original eighteen members were excused during the trial – was subsequently reduced to twelve deliberating jurors, with four alternates randomly selected in case of emergency.
The 12 jurors – seven women and five men – began their deliberations shortly after 1 p.m. and ended the day at 4 p.m.
Deliberations will continue on Friday morning.
This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Closing arguments in the quadruple murder trial of Mathew Locke
