PORTLAND – For the first time, accused murderer Brandon Thongsavanh of Lewiston testified before a jury Monday that he did not stab Bates College senior Morgan McDuffee in 2002.
Thongsavanh, 22, took the witness stand in Cumberland County Superior Court on day nine of his second murder trial. He is accused of stabbing the 22-year-old Lexington, Mass., economics student five times during an early morning fight on March 3, 2002, between Bates students and Auburn youths on Main Street in Lewiston.
He did not testify at his 2003 trial in Auburn, which ended with a conviction and a prison sentence of 58 years. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court overturned the verdict on grounds that the jury was biased.
In a packed courtroom Monday, he testified that “he never seen the kid get stabbed,” and that he never saw a knife at the fight.
On the drive from the fight, Thongsavanh said he had a CD in his hand, not a knife, and he wiped the CD on his pants.
Under questioning by Assistant Attorney General Lisa Marchese, Thongsavanh admitted lying to police when he said he was home the night of the stabbing. He also said he lied about going to the store to buy cigarettes and about what he wore.
Thongsavanh said Monday he was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt with a distinctive logo, or a shirt witnesses described as having a naked woman and obscene reference to Jesus.
Thongsavanh lied, he said Monday, because he wanted to distance himself from the killing. He didn’t want to be involved.
“You didn’t want to be involved in the stabbing involving Morgan McDuffee?” Marchese asked.
“I never killed Morgan McDuffee,” Thongsavanh said.
“Then why did all your friends leave your name out” while talking to police? the prosecutor asked.
“To make me the fall guy,” Thongsavanh said.
“Because you did it!” Marchese said in a loud, strong voice.
“I did not,” Thongsavanh responded.
Throughout two hours of testimony, Thongsavanh maintained a calm voice with little emotion. His hair is grown so that ram horn tattoos on his head are not visible. He wore dark pants, a white dress shirt and a black turtleneck that covered thorn tattoos on his neck.
When Marchese asked why he has worn turtlenecks at the trial, Thongsavanh said he didn’t want the jury judging him for the way he looks.
Thongsavanh’s lawyers maintain Chad Aube, 23, of Lewiston, stabbed McDuffee. Aube testified last week that he was fighting with McDuffee, but said it was Thongsavanh who stabbed him.
Under questioning from his lawyer David Van Dyke, Thongsavanh acknowledged he got in fights, partied, and had been in trouble with the law. He told Van Dyke he does not know who stabbed McDuffee.
On the night of the killing, Thongsavanh was 19. He had an infant with a former girlfriend, and was living with his new girlfriend who was pregnant with his second child, according to his testimony.
He said at that time in his life he “was trying to be a father figure” to his son and his girlfriend’s children. Also at that time, he cut back on drinking and partying to twice a month, he said Monday.
He started the evening of March 2, 2002, with drinking and driving around Lewiston and Auburn in Nick Barajas’ Chevrolet Blazer. They went to a party at Melissa Ramos’ apartment in Auburn, where he saw a girl who was “cute” and he was interested in.
At that party Thongsavanh said he picked up a folding knife with a black handle and played with it, twirling it around, because “I was bored.” He said he never opened the blade, and put the knife away when Crystal Cartwright asked him to.
Cartwright testified last week that Thongsavanh flicked the knife open, and she asked him to put it away.
Thongsavanh said Monday he last saw the knife when he put it on the TV stand at Ramos’ apartment.
From Ramos’ home, Thongsavanh, Barajas and Nate Tao went to Justin Asselin’s party in Auburn. He said he saw no weapons there. Sometime after 2 a.m. on March 3, “the door flung open and Chad (Aube) came in,” Thongsavanh said. Aube announced he “heard there’s a fight. Come on,” Thongsavanh testified. Everyone emptied out of the apartment into five vehicles and headed to Lewiston looking for a fight or a party.
They met up at the 7-Eleven store in Lewiston then drove around. “No one knew where they were going,” Thongsavanh said.
They came upon a fight on Main Street where Thongsavanh said he saw his friend, Greg Michaud, laying down being kicked. He ran over, but when he got there Michaud was no longer being kicked.
Thongsavanh said he went over to where Aube was fighting. He saw Aube hit a man and that man was stumbling, about to fall.
“I reached up and grabbed” the stumbling man to hit him,” Thongsavanh said. Someone then punched Thongsavanh in the face, he testified. “I saw stars.”
He then heard Mike Levesque say: “‘Don’t hit my boy,'” and Aube say: “Don’t f— with my boy,” Thongsavanh said. Out of the corner of his eye, Thongsavanh testified, he saw Aube going toward “the guy who struck me.”
Thongsavanh said he did not know who the man was he had been about to hit, and he did not know who hit that man.
He heard a woman scream, “The cops are coming. I turned around and ran,” Thongsavanh said. “I headed back toward Nick’s car.”
Back at Asselin’s apartment, Thongsavanh said he made eye contact with Jamie Asselin (no relation to Justin Asselin). They went into the bathroom.
“Jamie asked, ‘What the hell happened?’ I said ‘I don’t know,'” Thongsavanh said. “Jamie stared, like he wanted me to give him more information. I said, ‘What?’
“Jamie asked, ‘Who got stabbed?’ I told told him I didn’t know anyone had been stabbed,” Thongsavanh said.
The defendant said Barajas took him to Ramos’ apartment so he could see the cute girl he was interested in.
Thongsavanh denied to Marchese that he didn’t want to go to his Sabattus Street home because that would have meant riding by the crime scene.
Eventually, a man at Ramos’ home dropped off Thongsavanh near his apartment on Sabattus Street, and he went inside and went to sleep, Thongsavanh said.
He put his black shirt and jeans in a pile of laundry, and the next morning they weren’t there, Thongsavanh said. He told the court he assumed his girlfriend put them in the wash. When police later asked for the clothes he wore the night before, his girlfriend gave them the wrong clothes. He let police think they were what he was wearing “because I thought I’d never see (the police) again,” he said.
Police arrested Thongsavanh on March 4, 2002.
He said not giving police the right clothes “was the biggest mistake of my life.”
Those clothes and the knife were never found by police.
Thongsavanh told Marchese on Monday that he does not know where those clothes are.
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