By Bonnie Washuk,Staff Writer

PORTLAND – In the hours before Bates College senior Morgan McDuffee, 22, was stabbed to death, Brandon Thongsavanh of Lewiston was playing with a knife with a 5- or 6-inch blade, said Assistant Attorney General Lisa Marchese.

He was the only person seen with a knife all evening, the only one whose clothes were never found, the only one who changed his appearance by shaving his head after McDuffee was stabbed, Marchese said as the second murder trial of Thongsavanh began Tuesday.

She predicted the jury will find Thongsavanh, now 22, guilty.

The defense attorney disagreed.

“That day will never come,” said David Van Dyke. Unlike the last trial, Thongsavanh will take the stand and testify. They will show the jury he is not guilty, Van Dyke said.

“You will see who did it,” he said. “The man who did it will be seated in this box in one week,” he said, pointing to the witness stand. Van Dyke insisted the man who killed McDuffee was not the defendant, but Chad Aube.

When McDuffee was killed in an early morning street fight on March 3, 2002, Aube was the only man identified as fighting with the victim, Van Dyke said. “He was seen covered in blood from his shoulders to his knees.”

In 2003, a jury convicted Thongsavanh of murdering the McDuffee, the Bates College lacrosse captain. Last October, Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court overruled the guilty verdict saying the first jury was biased by repeated references to a T-shirt Thongsavanh was reportedly wearing the night of the stabbing. The shirt made an obscene reference to Jesus.

After a jury of nine men and five women was chosen Tuesday morning, Thongsavanh’s second murder trial began in Cumberland County Superior Court.

The prosecutor warned the new jury Tuesday that the story is complicated. It involves lies, a confusing night of fighting between Auburn kids and Bates students. Before the 2:30 a.m. fight broke out, there were multiple parties with hours of drinking.

Before McDuffee was stabbed, he was being beat up by Aube, Marchese said, describing the cold and rainy Main Street scene.

“Morgan is going down. Just as he does, this man comes over and scoops up Morgan,” she said pointing to Thongsavanh. Within moments of Thongsavanh’s getting involved, “Morgan McDuffee is on the ground dying” from five stab sounds, she said.

Three witnesses will testify that Thongsavanh stabbed McDuffee, she said.

But Van Dyke told the jury that police didn’t arrest the right suspect. Police arrested Thongsavanh within hours of the murder, and never considered that anyone but Thongsavanh committed the crime. Six friends said Aube told them he was the perpetrator, he said.

What the prosecutor didn’t tell them, Van Dyke said, is that witnesses who will testify that Thongsavanh stabbed McDuffee “were highly intoxicated” that night. One had 15 to 19 beers, plus vodka. Another had large volumes of alcohol and crack cocaine, he said.

As both lawyers gave opening remarks, Thongsavanh sat quietly in the courtroom wearing a tan suit and a turtleneck that covered tattoos of thorns on his neck. His hair covered ram-horn tattoos on his head. His family sat through the proceedings.

McDuffee’s mother, father, and friends and other relatives also sat through the day’s trial. Suzanne Andrew, McDuffee’s fiancé at the time, was called to the witness stand and was questioned about who was where on Main Street during the fight and stabbing.

Others called to the stand were McDuffee’s brother, Dylan; McDuffee’s friend, Meg Brown; and former Bates student Heang Tan. All said they did not see who stabbed him.

The trial is expected to continue for two and a half to three weeks. It is scheduled to resume this morning with the jury visiting the crime scene on Main Street in Lewiston.