AUBURN — State prosecutors called five more witnesses to the stand Monday, two of whom said Michael McNaughton told them he killed Romeo Parent in April of 2013.
But witnesses also offered conflicting testimony about a screwdriver that may be central to the case.
McNaughton, 26, is one of two men facing murder charges in the death of Parent, 20, of Lewiston, who was strangled to death and stabbed in the back of the neck with a screwdriver, according to a state medical examiner.
During the fourth day of the trial Monday in Androscoggin County Superior Court, Sebastian Moody and Christopher Belanger, both of Lewiston, said McNaughton told them he killed Parent using a homemade garrote and also stabbed at Parent with a screwdriver.
Belanger and Moody also said the screwdriver was dubbed “pokey thingy” while the garrote — made from a bicycle brake cable and a pair of wooden dowels — was called “chokey.”
Moody, who pleaded guilty to helping dispose of evidence of the crime earlier this year, including the garrote and clothing the suspect may have been wearing, served 3½ months in jail and is on probation.
Moody agreed with McNaughton’s court-appointed attorney, Verne Paradie Jr., that Moody had changed his story several times in various interviews with police. Several witnesses first told Lewiston police they had no information about what happened to Parent, but later came forward with statements implicating McNaughton.
“I was in fear of the same fate as Romeo got,” Moody said.
But Paradie suggested Moody simply told police what they wanted to hear in order to secure his own freedom. He said he finally came clean on this story after being arrested by state police while working at a carnival in Massachusetts because, “I wasn’t about to go down for something I didn’t do.”
Belanger and his sister, Delia Belanger, also testified Monday implicating McNaughton in the slaying.
Delia Belanger said she cut McNaughton’s hair the night Parent was killed and also that she saw her brother, Chris Belanger, crying and overheard him tell McNaughton that Parent “didn’t deserve it.”
Delia Belanger said she saw scratches on McNaughton’s neck and that he appeared, “shakey.”
Both Belangers and Moody confirmed McNaughton stayed with them on and off at Delia Belanger’s apartment on Bartlett Street around the time of the killing.
Two other witnesses also testified that they saw Parent get into a car with another man, Nathan Morton, 25 of Greene, who also is charged with murder in Parent’s death.
A third man, William True, 20 of Lewiston, also faces a murder charge in Parent’s death.
Both also described Morton’s dark-colored Volkswagen Passat as being the vehicle Parent climbed into, but both also said they could not see who else was in the car.
The state has alleged that Morton, True and McNaughton took Parent to a wooded area in Greene, where he was strangled as a punishment for implicating True in a burglary the men had committed together. Witnesses on Monday reiterated the saying they say McNaughton and others in parts of Lewiston’s downtown community live by — “snitches get stitches.”
Theodore “Teddy” Gagnon, 25, of Lewiston also took the stand to say that “rats get bats” was also a phrase used by the men and the group. Gagnon testified Monday that he was in a car being driven by Derrick Grondin, 25, of Lewiston when he saw Parent get into a car being driven by Morton.
Grondin also testified that he, too, saw Parent get into the vehicle with Morton at the parking lot of the CVS store on Court Street in Auburn.
The state alleges True, McNaughton and Morton acted together in the crime and Morton was the driver. Morton has since pleaded guilty to the lesser crime of conspiracy to commit murder in exchange for testifying as the state’s witness in McNaugton’s trial and a sentence of 20 years in prison with all but 10 years suspended.
On Monday, Moody said Parent was lured into the car by the men, who said they needed Parent’s help “because they were going to roll a big drug dealer,” Moody said.
But Moody and Christopher Belanger offered conflicting testimony around a screwdriver the state says was used during Parent’s killing.
Moody said a small, orange-handled screwdriver the state has entered as evidence in the case is one McNaughton had on him at all times and had nicknamed “pokey thingy.”
It’s also the type of screwdriver that another witness said Friday that McNaughton bragged he could kill a person three different ways with.
But when prosecutors showed the same screwdriver to Christopher Belanger, he said it wasn’t the same one that McNaughton frequently carried.
When asked if the screwdriver in evidence was the one McNaughton carried, Christopher Belanger said, “No, not exactly, no. It was a Phillips-head one.”
A medical examiner testified at the trial last week that the screwdriver found by police at the crime scene in Greene has been identified by several witnesses as belonging to McNaughton and was consistent with the injury to the back of Parent’s neck near the top of his spinal column.
Parent’s body, stripped and bound, was found in Jug Stream in Monmouth on April 12, 2013, about three days after his death.
On Monday, Paradie continued to pick away at the credibility of the state’s witnesses, who have repeatedly changed their stories since Parent first went missing in 2013.
McNaughton, wearing a dark suit and dark-framed glasses, sat quietly during the testimony, occasionally speaking with Paradie while taking notes on a legal pad.
Several witnesses are now corroborating their accounts of the events around Parent’s death and are implicating McNaughton.
The trial continues Tuesday at 9:30 a.m.
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