Deerfield murder suspect seeks dismissal

[ Originally published on: Tuesday, May 08, 2007 ]

GREENFIELD -- Dennis M. Bateman, who is accused of the 2005 strangulation murder of a pregnant Deerfield gas station attendant and her unborn son, tried again Monday to have the case against him dismissed in Superior Court.

Amidst a plethora of motions filed Monday by defense attorney Robert Jubinville were two claims that the case against Bateman had been built through police misconduct and the use of impermissible jailhouse informants.

Jubinville suggested in his arguments that police may have gone into the jail offering deals to anyone who could help them make a case against Bateman in the Deerfield slayings.

According to the defense attorney, inmates are questionable, at best, as sources of information because they usually hope for some sort of consideration on their own sentences in payment for their assistance.

'It is amazing how often inmates pop up with extremely damaging evidence,' he said.

Prosecutors said that they had no indication that inmates had been acting as police agents in the case.

According to Jubinville, the only way he, and the court, could assess the veracity of the inmates who claim to have heard Bateman make admissions about the murder would be to question them on the stand during an evidentiary hearing.

Superior Court Justice John Agostini, who will be hearing the murder case, said that he would take the motions under consideration and rule on them later this week.

Bateman, 42, who last lived on Silver Street in Greenfield, is charged with two counts of murder and one count of armed robbery. He pleaded innocent to the charges during his arraignment and has been held without bail since his arrest in 2005 in an unrelated case involving the theft of a bottle of bourbon from a Greenfield liquor store.

While Bateman was in custody on charges of stealing the liquor, he was indicted in the murder and robbery and is now being held on those charges.

His defense lawyer also filed several other pretrial motions during Monday's hearing including a demand that autopsy photographs not be shown to the jury. The defense lawyer argued that the photographs of the autopsy would 'inflame the jury and be prejudicial.' He also said that any information that could be conveyed by the photographs could be presented during testimony by the medical examiner.

Prosecutor Elizabeth Dunphy Farris told the court that she had only a few autopsy photographs to present and she argued that they would be important to the jury's understanding of the case.

The defense attorney then cited intense press coverage of the case and asked the judge for a change of venue.

The judge said that his normal mode of operations would be to see if he can impanel a jury in Franklin County first and then revisit the question of moving to another court if an impartial jury cannot be found.

Because of the nature of the case, 100 prospective jurors have been called in for both Wednesday and Thursday of this week to allow the selection of 12 jurors and four alternates.

Agostini has also allowed 16 preemptory challenges for both prosecution and defense, in which they can reject a juror without disclosing a reason.

During Monday's hearing, the court allowed joint motions that will have the jury view the gas station at which the body was found, the van driven by Bateman on the day in question, the parking lot of Wilson's department store in Greenfield and the Silver Street residence where the accused man last lived.

According to the district attorney, the murdered gas station attendant Brandy Waryasz was found April 16, 2005, strangled in one of the disused garage bays of the Routes 5 and 10 Sunoco station in Deerfield by a customer trying to pay for fuel.

Waryasz, who lived at 103 Third St. in Turners Falls, was about seven months pregnant when she was killed. Police say that she was slain in broad daylight and her body left on the floor of the station's garage within sight of the heavily traveled state highway.

Her killer, according to police, had taken the cash register, which A. R. Sandri Inc. officials say contained $150, at most.

The cash register has never been found.

The district attorney reports that Waryasz had a 'ligature tightly knotted around her neck' when she was found. Her baby's death was ruled as asphyxia due to the strangulation of his mother.

Prosecutors have said that the murder weapon was a web belt that had many traces of Bateman's DNA on it.

According to District Attorney Elizabeth Scheibel, a man matching Bateman's description was seen talking with the murdered girl only 10 minutes before her body was found at the Sunoco station.

The district attorney also said that her investigators have located numerous people who say that they saw a Ford Econoline van, very much like the one owned by Bateman, at the gas station right before the murder took place.

When questioned by police, Bateman admitted to being at the Sunoco station on the day that Waryasz died. He said that he had been having trouble with his van and so pulled it over next to the office at the gas station.

In his statement to police, which they say was 'electronically recorded,' Bateman said that he asked Waryasz for change so that he could call for help if he needed it on the way home.

'Bateman said that he retrieved some change from Waryasz's purse, located on a shelf by the counter,' according to a probable cause statement filed with the court.

During the interview, according to court records, Bateman told investigators that he and Waryasz had been 'horsing around' as he talked with her. He said that Waryasz was snapping a black belt at him and that she had hit him with the belt 'but it was no big deal.'

The state police laboratory said that they could detect DNA evidence for three people who had held the strap. The most DNA that they found, according to the report, belonged to Bateman.

During the hearing, Scheibel told the court that the DNA match between Bateman and the material found on the strap was so good that the chance of it belonging to someone else was infinitesimally small.

The opening of the murder trial is currently scheduled for Monday in Superior Court.

If convicted of on both counts of first degree murder, Bateman could be imprisoned for two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.

You can reach George Claxton at: gclaxton@recorder.com or (413) 772-0261 Ext. 279

 

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