Fairfax County Double Murder

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:About 10 years ago I was on the jury for a murder trial (large east coast city but not DC). It was pretty straightforward, the state wanted first degree murder and the defendant was arguing that it was self defense, and I think there was also an option for us to pick second degree murder ("heat of passion" or whatever) if we thought that was more appropriate? Spoiler alert, we didn't, we picked first degree murder.

Anyways, my point is, I remember the forensic testimony and I remember taking notes because I felt like I was getting clues to solve a mystery- I was like "oh! the lady said that the stab wounds were at an X degree angle, that means they were pointed downwards, that seems like he was kneeling or on the ground when he was stabbed- that can't be self defense!!" and I felt so proud of myself for being so clever, and wondering why on earth the prosecution was leaving it up to me to connect all of these dots from the testimony.

But, I was wrong. The closing statement tied it all together and pointed out very clearly all of these things that I thought I was supposed to put together on my own. They know that juries are often filled with many not very intelligent people. In this case too, I am sure that during closing arguments, the prosecution will be very clear as to what all of the testimony is pointing towards- they will explain the blood splatter on the shoes as being important, they will explain the blood clotting disorder piece and why it's important, they will explain it all.

I really hope you are right.

Comments on the CW attorney are disheartening. This is a big case. They have had tons of time.

Has the commonwealth attorney himself been there. I thought he was quite accomplished.

I am PP- I am sure I'm right (if the lawyer is competent). The lawyer can't always make these insinuations while questioning the witnesses because they have to stick to facts that the witness can attest to or provide. The closing arguments are for putting it all together for the jury. I have been on a couple other trials as well- no other murder ones thankfully- and that is how it has always gone. They get facts from the witnesses and then they put it together into a cohesive story for you at the end. At least, in my limited experience, it is NOT like in the movies where the story is always super cohesive during testimony.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Defense is objecting to things like the photograph with markings to preserve the issue for appeal. Generally on appeal the issue or error has to have been raised contemporaneously to be considered so defense is just doing their job.

I am a little surprised the CW didn’t bring the doctor in or a medical expert to review records. I can understand wanting to stay focused on a cohesive narrative and I think the CW has done a pretty good job of that so far but it seems like it would have been worth it to at least briefly go over those. I guess they got there overall. The dad did say there was a “treatment” that she got, instead of an ongoing medication and it was given by doctors, not the parents. I would assume this was an injection. Overall it seems like it might have been worth it to establish this but I guess I would say I found the dad’s testimony credible.

It doesn't feel like enough to me. I'm not sure they established as a fact in the case that CB had a blood clotting disorder that would have led her to bleed out if she engaged in knife play. Listening solely to the testimony, it sounded like she had to be careful as a kid doe to some unknown condition, but it was managed well enough in adulthood and she participated in many sports and they did not establish that she wore any protective gear or took precautions as an adult. I don't think it's absolutely essential to the CW's case, but it's like, why bring it up if they weren't going to establish it very clearly.

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Is it possible that the clotting disorder isn't even very serious, so they can't really get into it much more than that? Do we even know what disorder it is?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a couple hours behind but watching the audio of Brendan going to hospital. Doctor says "your wife has died."

I assume bluntness by the doctor is the right approach so people can process and understand the news. In a general situation however is it normal for the doctor/officer to stick to their roles and be fairly silent while someone processes the loss of their spouse or do you think they were treading carefully here because it was a crime scene?

I was about to ask that!!! Can someone answer this ?

Training for doctors and similarly for first responders/LEOs is to keep words to a minimum and very clear ‘X has died’ because of the unpredictability of response, cultural differences and difficulty grasping death if euphemisms are used (passed away, no longer with us, in a better place) and for legal precision.

Additionally some doctors and LEOs aren’t really comfortable with death or grief, but they must perform the professional duty of information sharing with next of kin. If you watch much true crime or crime dramas, you’ll see cops speak to one another about the worst part of the job being death notifications. Most doctors feel the same. Some folks being notified lose their shit, some get violent, some blame the messenger etc. It’s not an easy task.

When it comes to LEOs, their training is to being suspicion to the task because they could be notifying the perpetrator so they are always looking for evidence in the way the response unfolds.

For folks who don’t have experience of ER medicine or law enforcement it might be hard to understand what this is like for those of us who do. Imagine if you had to do that kind of thing routinely; there is a lot of vicarious trauma.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok.
Say catfish theory is out. CB did invite JR over. He still stabbed her and they both killed JR.

What evidence is there that BB stabbed her?

I have not watched the trial but if the prosecution brought up blood splatter evidence on BB's shoes consisting of Christine's blood, that can indicate that he was actively stabbing her. You don't get certain blood splatters from running up to a person who has already been stabbed and trying to save them. Some types of splatters you are only going to get if you are the one doing the stabbing, and the blood is spraying back at you (sorry for the graphic nature of this comment)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a couple hours behind but watching the audio of Brendan going to hospital. Doctor says "your wife has died."

I assume bluntness by the doctor is the right approach so people can process and understand the news. In a general situation however is it normal for the doctor/officer to stick to their roles and be fairly silent while someone processes the loss of their spouse or do you think they were treading carefully here because it was a crime scene?

Yes, doctors generally will stick to the medical facts (hopefully presented in a compassionate tone) and there are other hospital employees who come and help with the grief aspect. Although the doctors of course will usually stay as long as the family wants, to answer questions about what happened. If the family member isn't asking any, then yeah, the doctor will probably leave it to the social worker/ chaplain/etc at some point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok.
Say catfish theory is out. CB did invite JR over. He still stabbed her and they both killed JR.

You think JM made all that up? You think JM knew exactly words and timing of when messages were sent by “Christine” if JM wasn’t the one writing them? No.

Calm down. I’m not defending her.
I’m saying that the defense attorney keeps saying that it wasn’t catfish. Even if it wasn’t, they still killed CB and JR so it doesn’t matter.

What evidence do you have that they killed CB?

The blood splatter evidence. The circumstantial evidence of their cars movements that day. The fact that the first 911 call didn't even mention CB, just Joe (I think). You'd think that would be the focus of your call, right?? That your wife/ boss had been attacked with a knife? You'd think the fact that you shot the intruder would be sort of secondary, to be honest. The focus would be on your loved one who was dying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok.
Say catfish theory is out. CB did invite JR over. He still stabbed her and they both killed JR.

You think JM made all that up? You think JM knew exactly words and timing of when messages were sent by “Christine” if JM wasn’t the one writing them? No.

Calm down. I’m not defending her.
I’m saying that the defense attorney keeps saying that it wasn’t catfish. Even if it wasn’t, they still killed CB and JR so it doesn’t matter.

What evidence do you have that they killed CB?

I don’t have any. That’s with the CW.

I believe BB is guilty as hell, but in my opinion, CW has not done a good job of establishing She was stabbed by Brendan. I hope they can really pull it together in the closing statements for the jury but I’m worried this guy is gonna go free.

What specifically are you looking for, forensic evidence (something about angle of knife wounds or blood etc)? There is a lot of eyewitness testimony that he is the one who stabbed her, and further, that he had been planning to stab her for months.

There are only really 3 possibilities: she was stabbed by Joe; she was stabbed by Brendan; she was stabbed by Juliana.

Most of this will come down to how credible a witness Juliana was. But even if you wanted to discount her testimony as biased or made up, I think there will be significant facts referred to in closing argument by the CW about how Joe was NOT the one who stabbed Christine. The jury is allowed to make inferences and draw on circumstantial evidence.

Not predicting anything as to this particular jury, however!!

this is a good point. it wasn't one of a million people who killed her, it was one of 3 people. joe, au pair, brendan. the prosecution will help the jury understand that it was highly unlikely to have been joe- no blood splatter on him which would have been everywhere if he'd stabbed her, for example. so that leaves the au pair and brendan. and why would brendan stand around and let the au pair stab his wife, and then shack up with her afterwords? unless he was in on it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:She died of blood loss? Doctor said her airway was fine. So the 911 hang up was a deadly delay?

The 911 hang up could have been because she hadn't been attacked yet, or if she had, she wasn't yet close enough to being dead.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There’s just so many unanswered questions. No testimony about the state of the marriage. No testimony about her work habits and schedule like when she last worked, how tiring that would be - anything to establish that she isn’t likely to do something like this. Nothing to show that she did or didn’t use her laptop in the evening normally. No one asked Julian why she would go along with something like this? The whole thing feels so incomplete thus far. I can see jurors saying “I think he did it but they didn’t prove it.”

All the questions you are asking are kind of irrelevant, and also easily rebutted. "She didn't normally use her computer in the evenings". "I will show you evidence that this one time, a year ago, she did in fact use her computer in the evening as evidenced by these email time stamps".
"After a 12 hour work shift, she was usually too tired to want to do anything in the early morning. "I present evidence that 6 months before her death, she woke up at 6am and took a day trip to Ocean City with her daughter after working a 12 hour shift the night before."

See what I mean? If anything, that makes the prosecution look like they are grasping at straws, and is bad for their case. Stick to the eye witness testimony and the cold hard forensics. The other stuff is too easily argued.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand why the defense is playing these body cam recordings without injecting with any questions that tell the story.

Because it is not the opening or closing arguments. They are not supposed to be arguing anything, just presenting facts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:She died of blood loss? Doctor said her airway was fine. So the 911 hang up was a deadly delay?

The 911 hang up could have been because she hadn't been attacked yet, or if she had, she wasn't yet close enough to being dead.

This is part of the proof that he was shot before she was stabbed or said another way that she was not already stabbed when they entered the room. They would have called 911 right away for obvious reasons but also because of what we heard today when the Dr and Brendan both acknowledged the injuries were so severe they could not have stopped the blood loss. In what scenario would you not call 911 right away? All that to say, the initial 911 (whether an accident or because Christine said to call 911 per Juliana’s testimony), was because there was an emergency situation that was either not life-threatening or that they wanted to delay the person living. I hope what I’m saying is making sense. Bottom line is that if Brendan had walked in the room seeing his wife so severely injured from stab wounds that she would die of blood loss, they would have called for help right away, not had three separate calls to 911 over a period of 10+ minutes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a couple hours behind but watching the audio of Brendan going to hospital. Doctor says "your wife has died."

I assume bluntness by the doctor is the right approach so people can process and understand the news. In a general situation however is it normal for the doctor/officer to stick to their roles and be fairly silent while someone processes the loss of their spouse or do you think they were treading carefully here because it was a crime scene?

I was about to ask that!!! Can someone answer this ?

Training for doctors and similarly for first responders/LEOs is to keep words to a minimum and very clear ‘X has died’ because of the unpredictability of response, cultural differences and difficulty grasping death if euphemisms are used (passed away, no longer with us, in a better place) and for legal precision.

Additionally some doctors and LEOs aren’t really comfortable with death or grief, but they must perform the professional duty of information sharing with next of kin. If you watch much true crime or crime dramas, you’ll see cops speak to one another about the worst part of the job being death notifications. Most doctors feel the same. Some folks being notified lose their shit, some get violent, some blame the messenger etc. It’s not an easy task.

When it comes to LEOs, their training is to being suspicion to the task because they could be notifying the perpetrator so they are always looking for evidence in the way the response unfolds.

For folks who don’t have experience of ER medicine or law enforcement it might be hard to understand what this is like for those of us who do. Imagine if you had to do that kind of thing routinely; there is a lot of vicarious trauma.

Thanks for your response and sharing the protocols with us. Yes, I was really wondering how the doctor was doing listening to that testimony or when she found out. To later find out it was the husband who was charged, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:She died of blood loss? Doctor said her airway was fine. So the 911 hang up was a deadly delay?

The 911 hang up could have been because she hadn't been attacked yet, or if she had, she wasn't yet close enough to being dead.

The defense presented evidence today – body cam video/audio – of the doctor telling Brendan her wounds were so severe she could not have survived, and Brenda acknowledging that saying there were so many wounds. If she had already been attacked, why didn’t they call 911 immediately?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Defense is objecting to things like the photograph with markings to preserve the issue for appeal. Generally on appeal the issue or error has to have been raised contemporaneously to be considered so defense is just doing their job.

I am a little surprised the CW didn’t bring the doctor in or a medical expert to review records. I can understand wanting to stay focused on a cohesive narrative and I think the CW has done a pretty good job of that so far but it seems like it would have been worth it to at least briefly go over those. I guess they got there overall. The dad did say there was a “treatment” that she got, instead of an ongoing medication and it was given by doctors, not the parents. I would assume this was an injection. Overall it seems like it might have been worth it to establish this but I guess I would say I found the dad’s testimony credible.

It doesn't feel like enough to me. I'm not sure they established as a fact in the case that CB had a blood clotting disorder that would have led her to bleed out if she engaged in knife play. Listening solely to the testimony, it sounded like she had to be careful as a kid doe to some unknown condition, but it was managed well enough in adulthood and she participated in many sports and they did not establish that she wore any protective gear or took precautions as an adult. I don't think it's absolutely essential to the CW's case, but it's like, why bring it up if they weren't going to establish it very clearly.

\
Is it possible that the clotting disorder isn't even very serious, so they can't really get into it much more than that? Do we even know what disorder it is?

It’s serious enough that they had to take precautions during the child’s birth. Brendan knew that. Probably why he chose this manner of her death. At least that’s what will be presented.

[Anonymous]

This witness this afternoon sure loves to hear himself talk. We don’t care about all of your cases at the DOJ. CW is doing a good job of stopping the flow by objecting.