Jury hears of betrayal, ‘obsession’ on first day

Sept. 05--NORWICH -- Opening statements Thursday from both the prosecutor and the defense lawyer in the murder trial of Ganesh "Remy" Ramsaran on Thursday suggested the case will be about "obsession."

Chenango County District Attorney Joseph McBride said the evidence will show Ramsaran -- charged with killing his wife, Jennifer, on Dec. 11, 2012 -- had a sexual "obsession" with his then-girlfriend and running partner, Eileen Sayles.

Defense lawyer Gil Garcia said it was police investigators who were "obsessed," and were focused solely on pinning the blame on the husband well before the body of his wife was found off a remote road in Pharsalia in late February 2013.

Claiming that police rushed to judgment, Garcia argued that the evidence will fail to prove Jennifer Ramsaran was murdered, and predicted the prosecution won't be able to prove she died on the day his client is charged with killing her.

"We don't know how she died," Garcia said. "We don't know when she died. ...There is not a shred of evidence that links Mr. Ramsaran to this murder."

McBride said Ganesh Ramsaran, 39, had several motivations to kill his wife -- to be with Sayles, to avoid having his wife get half the proceeds of selling the home, to collect $200,000 in insurance on her life and to avoid paying her alimony.

He said the accused killer was so obsessed with Sayles that he called her 2,480 times in 2013, and sent her numerous text messages, some with graphic overtures about sexual acts he wanted to perform with her.

The prosecutor also revealed that "remnants" of Jennifer Ramsaran's blood were found on the sweatshirt worn by the husband on the day of the killing. He also said forensic evidence will show Jennifer Ramsaran's blood in several spots on the floor of her van after it was recovered six days after Ganesh Ramsaran reported her missing.

Providing the most detailed public account yet of how the killing allegedly took place, McBride said it is believed Ramsaran killed his wife at about 8:15 a.m. on Dec. 11, 2012, about the time she was apparently interrupted while playing an online video game called King of Camelot with a male friend in England.

"At 8:13 a.m., she did something she had never done," McBride said. "She disappeared from the game without further notice. She never came back. She never explained where she was. She just did not return." Perplexed, the man sent her a text message at 8:33 a.m., but got no response, McBride said.

Less than 24 hours earlier, McBride said, Ganesh Ramsaran had patched things up with Sayles, who had cut off the relationship just two weeks earlier to go back with her husband. Sayles is expected to provide prosecution testimony in the case, the prosecutor told the jury. McBride said her extramarital affair with Ramsaran began in February 2007 and continued until 2013, the year Ramsaran was charged with second-degree murder.

After killing Jennifer Ramsaran, the husband cleaned up the evidence, then put her body in her van and drove off, McBride said.

"He drove from his house and drove up to Pharsalia and stopped the van in an area where there were not houses around, and unceremoniously dropped it on the side of the road," McBride said.

He also noted that a router and wireless modem in the house -- which Ganesh Ramsaran had called "psychoG" -- had connected with his wife's iPhone after the time he told police she left the house to go shopping for Christmas presents at a Syracuse-area mall.

McBride said Ganesh Ramsaran, after disposing of the body, then drove the van to Plymouth, where he ditched his wife's phone between rocks in a creek bed, then drove to Norwich where he left the van, with his wife's blood smeared on the rug, outside an apartment complex. Finally, he went to the the YMCA and took a sauna.

It was at the YMCA where Ramsaran made the first of a series of "deceptive" statements, telling a desk clerk and later on off-duty trooper in an adjoining sauna that he had run to Norwich from his house, but stopped at the gym because he was getting cold, McBride said.

"The evidence will show that he didn't" run to the Y, the prosecutor said, noting Ramsaran's story didn't jibe with the fact his image never showed up on surveillance cameras used by businesses he said had jogged past on the way to the gym.

A YMCA camera, he added, did capture his image -- but he was coming from the west, not from the north, as his account suggested.

To get back to his house from the gym, McBride said, Ganesh Ramsaran called Sayles, who went to the YMCA and gave him a lift to the house.

McBride also noted that when Ganesh Ramsaran reported his wife missing to police later that day, he claimed he and his wife were having no significant marital problems, and never mentioned she had been playing an online game that morning with another man.

However, he later changed his story, telling police in subsequent statements that she was involved with a number of men in online communications, McBride said.

The district attorney said Ramsaran even tried to show his mother-in-law nude photographs of Jennifer Ramsaran, suggesting she was sending them to other men. In fact, McBride said, Ganesh Ramsaran had encouraged his wife to provide those photographs to him, and he ended up using them to damage her reputation with her family.

McBride also said the trial will feature testimony from a local woman who visited with Ganesh Ramsaran several days after his wife was reported as missing.

During the conversation, McBride said, Ramsaran told the woman he "regretted" that he, the woman and Jennifer Ramsaran "had not gotten together for a three-way," and then asked the woman if she would be interested in having a sexual tryst with him. Upset by the proposition, the woman then left the house, McBride said.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is a circumstantial case, and we need to take it very seriously," McBride said in summing up after speaking for 30 minutes.

"The bottom line," he continued, "is that the day after he got back together with his girlfriend, when he had said, 'I will do everything and anything and everything for us to be together,' his wife was murdered. There is no doubt she was murdered. No on can argue suicide. So the only question, ladies and gentlemen, is: Who did it? And all the evidence that I just outlined is all evidence that proves beyond any reasonable doubt that this defendant killed his wife on Dec. 11, 2012.

Garcia scoffed at McBride's theory that Ganesh Ramsaran killed his wife over an obsession with Sayles, noting his client's proposition to the third woman.

"The evidence will show there was not an obsession," Garcia said. "If he is asking someone else to have a three-way, that is really not much of an obsession."

Speaking directly to the jury of nine men and three women, with four alternates, Garcia said in his 10-minute opening statement: "Think not with your stomachs, but with your minds, and that's a mandate most judges accept."

The defense lawyer added: "This is a very sad case; everyone would agree with that. A young woman who was full of life is no longer with us. A daughter, a mother, a wife. Even more sad than that is her former husband is accused of having killed her."

Garcia also took aim at the homicide investigation headed by the Chenango County Sheriff's department, with assistance from State Police and New Berlin Police.

"That body was not found (until more than two months after Jennifer Ramsaran was reported missing) because the police did a very shoddy job here," Garcia said. "Why? Because they concentrated on Mr. Ramsaran from Day One as the suspect. They didn't tell him, but he was their suspect. So nothing else mattered and no one else mattered in this case. And the evidence will show that there were other people who should have been looked at in this case."

Garcia said the man from London who played online games with Jennifer Rasaran will offer testimony suggesting that "there were other people involved -- but the police did not follow up."

Garcia also cast doubt on the Dec. 11, 2012 timeline offered by McBride, noting it would have given Ganesh Ramsaran only 74 minutes to leave the house in South New Berlin, dump the body in Pharsalia, ditch the phone in Plymouth, abandon the van in Norwich and then arrive at the YMCA at 12:44 p.m.

"That would be impossible," said Garcia, who limited his opening statement to 10 minutes.

After the opening statements were given in a trial presided over by Chenango County Judge Frank Revoir Jr., the prosecution's lead-off witness, New Berlin police officer Richard Pagillo recounted Ganesh Ramsaran's demeanor when he filed a missing person report after arriving at the police station at 7:54 p.m. on Dec. 11, 2012.

"He had tears in his eyes," Pagillo said. "He was crying." He later added: "He was more upset than what I thought was necessary." The officer said he inquired as to whether the Ramsarans had been having any marital difficulties, and Ganesh Ramsaran responded that the marriage was "pretty much perfect," and the two had no arguments over the past couple of weeks.

The following morning, Pagillo said, he was off-duty when he returned to the police station, and spotted Ramsaran there with Sayles.

In his initial instructions to the jurors, Judge Revoir advised the panel that Ramsaran is presumed innocent. One juror was spotted scribbling notes during the opening statements, and the judge ordered the notebook confiscated and instructed the jurors to refrain from taking notes during the proceeding. Once deliberations begin, he said, the jurors may ask to have portions of testimony read back to them.

Garcia told the jurors he expects to have them go to the Ramsaran house as well as the locations where the body, the phone and the van were recovered.

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