Juror: Ramsaran alibi didn’t hold up
By Joe Mahoney, The Daily Star, Oneonta, N.Y. | |
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
It was
But it turned out he had indeed been hiding things, according to testimony at his trial that concluded Tuesday evening in
According to one of those jurors, Pastor
"There were just so many holes in his story, and the story kept changing," Mullenax said.
JUROR: WEIGHT OF EVIDENCE SPOKE FOR ITSELF
Mullenax said Ramsaran's lawyer,
Nevertheless, the pastor pointed out, "Guilty men lie, and the lies become obvious."
The jurors, he said, did not judge Ramsaran based on the fact he was having an affair with his wife's best friend and sending that woman lurid messages and raunchy photographs in the weeks before
Instead, he said, the verdict was based on the strong circumstantial evidence assembled by
The pastor said he felt the anguish of the families of
"It is so incredibly sad to see both of these families suffer," Mullenax said.
The fact that Ramsaran often rambled on during his testimony, ignoring objections from McBride to limit his answers to the scope of the questions, as well as admonitions from Judge
"I don't blame
But in the end it was the weight of the prosecution evidence against him that sank him in the eyes of the jury, he added.
Mullenax said he was greatly impressed by the professionalism of the police work that went into the case, as well as the amount of inter-agency cooperation between the
The jurors got to know each other a bit after meeting for coffee in the mornings, making small talk about their families and personal lives, as they were barred from discussing the case in hand, he noted.
No strident debates broke out during deliberations, he said. "We were pretty united," he said. "It was nothing like you see on TV."
Mullenax also gave high marks to McBride and Garcia. "Both attorneys did a stellar job," he said. He said he was heartened to hear McBride explain that his job was to obtain justice, not necessarily convictions. Mullenax said the last thing he would ever want to do is put an innocent person in state prison.
TRIAL REVEALED HOLES IN RAMSARAN'S STORY
During the trial, McBride highlighted the many inconsistencies and discrepancies in the statements Ramsaran had made to police beginning when he first reported her missing.
For instance, according to prosecution testimony, he told a
But the marriage, it quickly became clear to detectives, was anything but perfect, and Ramsaran amended his story one day later to admit he had a girlfriend. Her name was
It also came up in trial testimony that before he turned over his iPhone to police he had deleted files from it -- newer ones, such as those created in the weeks immediately before he claimed his wife mysteriously vanished amid a shopping trip to a
On
His theory as to what happened to his wife also underwent revision as the investigation progressed.
On
But by the
But harmed she was, and it was the night of
He indicated then he didn't wish to discuss the matter. The man who had said he had nothing to hide then hung up on the reporter.
According to authorities, Ramsaran fell asleep on the couch and was officially notified a couple of hours later about the body by representatives of the
The inconsistencies in
The jury had also heard that
McBride said in an interview Wednesday that one of Ramsaran's former friends,
TECH TRAIL COULDN'T BE FULLY ERASED
Though Ramsaran has expertise in computers, digital technology did not do the
While Ramsaran was able to wipe out lurid Facebook messages he had sent to his girlfriend, he apparently wasn't banking on the fact that police would end up getting access to those notes via Sayles' Facebook account, authorities said.
Another damning revelation against him came when detectives found out that
McBride also said that, while it was not evidence at the trial, authorities also suspect Ramsaran arranged to have messages from his wife's phone deleted before investigators could reconstruct them.
The prosecutor said a series of text messages between
"He was telling everyone how much he loved his wife," McBride said. "But those messages demonstrate he was anything but caring and loving to her."
By
"She was a very good mother,"
Wilcox also told the newspaper then that he never believed that
"She would never, ever, leave her kids," Wilcox had said. "Those kids were her life. If somebody tried to abduct her, she would have fought with her last dying breath to get back to her kids and to her parents."
Reached Wednesday night, Wilcox said he wasn't at all surprised that
"The writing was on the wall," said Wilcox, who said he still misses the long walks
'JUSTICE FOR JENNIFER' AT LAST
On Tuesday, several members of an ad hoc community group called Justice for
"It just didn't make any sense to me that Jennifer, this Sunday school teacher, would just leave her three children, right before the birthday of one of her daughters, and right before Christmas," Stearns said Wednesday.
She said the group is now hoping to organize a second funeral for the victim, as
As of Wednesday night, the Justice for
At the trial of
___
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