Defendant in murder trial awaits verdict

Sept. 23--NORWICH -- Two months after he allegedly murdered his wife, Ganesh "Remy" Ramsaran testified Monday, he was watching a Dateline NBC story examining the unsolved murder case involving a husband suspected of killing his wife when he exchanged Facebook comments with a woman watching the same program.

"The husbands always do it," he told the woman, identified as a psychic named Krista Foos, on Feb. 23, 2013, according to the transcript of the Facebook chat exhibit introduced by Chenango District Attorney Joseph McBride.

"If they ever do a show about you, I better be in it LOL," Foos replied according to the transcript.

"You will be one of my many, many affairs LOL," Ramsaran, 39, responded, according to the transcript.

McBride, in depicting Ramsaran as callously disinterested in the search then taking place for Jennifer Ramsaran, his wife of 13 years, drew attention to the Facebook exchange in ending his cross-examination of the defendant with a flourish.

Through his questions, he suggested that Ramsaran was "joking around" about his wife's disappearance, a charge that Ramsaran denied.

But the prosecutor did get Ramsaran to confirm he had written, "You will be one of my many, many affairs LOL."

"What does LOL mean?" the prosecutor asked Ramsaran.

"Laugh out loud," Ramsaran said.

"Laugh out loud," McBride, turning to the jury, said matter-of-factly. "Judge, with that, I have nothing further."

Defense lawyer Gil Garcia then rested his case, with Ramsaran as his first and only witness. The case, following seven days of testimony, is expected to go to the jury this afternoon following final arguments by McBride and Garcia.

Judge Frank Revoir Jr. advised the jurors to be prepared to stay past the normal court closing time, with deliberations potentially lasting as late as 8 p.m.

Throughout his cross examination, McBride portrayed Ramsaran, a former program manager for IBM, as being far more focused on his affair with his girlfriend, Eileen Sayles, then he was on the search for Jennifer Ramsaran.

The prosecutor also suggested Ramsaran sought to smear his wife by telling others that she was taking drugs and supposedly having sex with a disabled man for whom she worked as a part-time caretaker, when in fact it was Ganesh Ramsaran and Sayles who were getting together for trysts in the Ramsaran home on Sheff Road in South New Berlin while Jennifer Ramsaran was out working.

The victim's unclothed body was found off a remote road in Pharsalia on Feb. 26, 2013. She had been reported missing by her husband to the New Berlin Police Department on Dec. 11, 2012.

In early May 2012, less than two weeks before Ramsaran was arrested by the Chenango County Sheriff's Department and charged with murder, the defendant invited Sayles' husband, Patrick Sayles, to meet with him at the grave site of Jennifer Ramsaran, Ganesh Ramsaran acknowledged while being grilled by McBride.

Ramsaran testified Patrick Sayles wanted to meet him at a local Dunkin' Donuts, but he acknowledged meeting at Jennifer Ramsaran's grave was his idea.

"You wanted to meet your girlfriend's husband at your wife's grave," McBride said. "Don't you think that was a little inappropriate?"

In his direct examination by Garcia, Ramsaran testified that he first learned that his wife's body was found at about 11 p.m. on Feb. 26, 2013, when two representatives of the Sheriff's Department went to his house.

Under cross-examination by McBride, Ramsaran acknowledged he was apprised via a telephone call from this reporter earlier that evening that the body had been located that day. Ramsaran also acknowledged in response to McBride's questions that he fell asleep on the couch after that call, only to be awakened later when the investigators arrived at the home.

McBride had said at the outset of the trial that the motive for the killing was Ganesh Ramsaran's "obsession" with Eileen Sayles as well as financial considerations, such as collecting $200,000 from a life insurance policy on his wife as well as avoiding alimony and losing his share of the real estate and other assets to the victim.

Garcia has argued that police rushed to judgement in focusing the investigation on Jennifer Ramsaran's husband, failed to pursue unrelated leads and came up with no direct evidence linking his client to murder.

McBride suggested in his questions that Ganesh Ramsaran, on the day of the alleged killing, deliberately ditched his wife's van two spaces away from a trash receptacle at the Plank Road Manor Apartments in Norwich, and tossed her purse into that container.

Ramsaran said he has no knowledge of the layout of that lot and pointed out his wife's purse was never found.

Ramsaran also denied that he sexually propositioned a bank teller who stopped by his house to console him on Dec. 16, 2012, the same day his father-in-law, Thomas Renz, found Jennifer Ramsaran's van outside the apartment complex.

Ramsaran jousted with McBride over the significance that his wife's corpse was unclothed when it was found, a detail that the prosecutor argued she was killed in her house before the body was transported to Pharsalia in her van.

"I'm the one who told the cops my wife sleeps naked," said Ramsaran, maintaining that he provided police with full access to search his house in the days after the disappearance.

McBride said Ramsaran had deleted an assortment of files from his iPhone before handing it over to investigators, and rather than eliminating older files, got rid of newer ones. Ramsaran argued he simply removed some files because he was running out of storage space on the device.

McBride also pointed out that Ganesh Ramsaran, through a series of initial interviews with police, never mentioned she was playing an online game with her iPhone on the morning of the disappearance. Her involvement in online games had become a source of friction between the two, even in the period during which Ramsaran said he was having sex with Sayles several times a week, according to earlier testimony at the trial.

Ramsaran also explained why he went to the home of Eileen Sayles' mother and stepfather a few days after reporting Jennifer Ramsaran was missing to advise them of the affair.

He said Eileen Sayles had "become really hysterical, and he was trying to gain the cooperation of the parents in monitoring her. "I explained everything to them," said Ramsaran, mentioning he had told them of his "overall plan" to get divorced and marry Sayles.

"I wanted them to take care of her," he testified.

During his testimony Monday, Ramsaran repeatedly deviated from strict instructions from Judge Revoir to answer questions directly rather than going off on tangents and arguing over the phrasing of questions, prompting the jurist to lecture him. "Just answer the question and don't provide smart-alec responses," the judge intoned.

Noting that Ramsaran has prided himself as a workout buff who competed in marathons and owns elaborate weight-lifting gear, the prosecutor at one point asked Ramsaran if was capable of killing his wife with his "bare hands." Ramsaran repeatedly argued that he "never" had the motivation to kill his wife -- and still cared about her even after falling out of love with her.

But he acknowledged that he and Jennifer Ramsaran had discussed getting divorced in an angry exchange of text messages on Nov. 6, 2011.

"You want to be with Eileen, your trophy wife," Jennifer Ramsaran wrote, according to the transcript introduced as a prosecution evidence by McBride.

After Ganesh Ramsaran stated he wanted a divorce, Jennifer Ramsaran responded: "You want Eileen, that's it?"

"What would give you that idea?" Ganesh Ramsaran replied, according to the transcript.

McBride argued that Ganesh Ramsaran deceived his wife about the affair throughout 2012, and made no mention of it when he first reported her missing to police.

"It wasn't asked," Ganesh Ramsaran testified.

"You got very good at deceiving people, didn't you?" McBride said.

"I'm very honest," Ramsaran said.

___

(c)2014 The Daily Star (Oneonta, N.Y.)

Visit The Daily Star (Oneonta, N.Y.) at www.thedailystar.com

Distributed by MCT Information Services