Jury deliberates over Scesny
You never can tell what a jury will do. Following closing arguments at the Alex Scesny rape trial today the word outside the courtroom was we were in for a quick verdict. The feeling — at least from various media types gathered in the court lobby — was that the case against Scesny seemed a little weak in hard evidence. These cases sometimes are. The question of wheter Alex Scesny had sex with his then-girlfriend at the West Boylston Motor Lodge wasn’t being denied by eiher side. Evidence seemed to suppor that. But at stake here is whether the jury buys the argument that Scesny’s girlfriend awoke early that mornig to find Scesny analy raping her before calling her a whore and throwing her and her stuff out of the motel room. And the star witness — the victim — admits the two were both strung out at the time on crack cocaine. Yep, she’s no angel. And it’s his word against hers.
After several hours of deliberations today, the judge sent the jury home to resume deliberations tomorrow. Not such a quick deliberation after all.
Telegram story: Victim tells of alleged abuse
Why are three TV news crews and yours truly even covering this? The one thing the jury didn’t hear in this trial is the fact that Worcester County District Attorney Joe Early Jr. has named Mr. Scesny a “person of interest” in the slaying of a Worcester prostitute in 1996. DNA from Mr. Scesny collected from the alleged rape matched that on the corpse of the deceased woman. That case appears to be connected to five other cases of slain prostitutes — one who’s body was found stuffed into a trash can in Maine in 2004. Pretty gruesome stuff.
Inside the courtroom, this is clearly a case of two crackheads and whether or not one of them was raped by the other. That’s what the jury is there to decided. Outside, the question remains as to whether the man police have in custody is the nefarious “Main South Woodsman,” the so-named serial killer who has stalked hookers in Worcester since the mid-’90s. And how long will Mr. Scesny remain a “person of interest” in those cases? It’s been nearly five months since the DA’s office first offered up his name and yet he still hasn’t been named a suspect — although it would appear as though he’s being treated as such. DA Spokesman Tim Connolly would only confirm today that a team of investigators from several agencies and counties have continued to meet regularly on the cases. The saga drags on.
