Neighbor says East Windsor murder suspect spoke of wanting to kill father
Mar. 24—A former neighbor of Gabriel Hesse, who is accused of stabbing his father to death in the older man's East Windsor mobile home in October 2019, testified during Hesse's murder trial Thursday that she had heard him say he wanted to kill his father.
But the former neighbor, Jane King, acknowledged on cross examination by public defender R. Bruce Lorenzen that she may not have told police about hearing that statement when she was interviewed after the discovery of the body of Halsey Hesse Jr., 73.
Jane King was the wife of Kevin L. King, who died in December at age 57.
MURDER TESTIMONY
CLAIM: Jane King, a former neighbor of murder defendant Gabriel Hesse, testifies that she heard him say he wanted to kill his father, Halsey Hesse Jr., who was later found dead of at least 70 stab wounds in his East Windsor mobile home.
ISSUE: King admits she may not have told East Windsor police during the murder investigation about hearing this statement, although she did tell police that her husband, Kevin L. King, who has since died, had told her about hearing Gabriel Hesse say such things.
She testified under direct examination by prosecutor Amy Bepko during the trial in Hartford Superior Court that her husband and Gabriel Hesse were best friends and would buy drugs together at a particular Hartford address.
Jane King said she knew where the drugs came from because she had been there, having given her husband rides. She said she did so because she wanted to avoid the things he would call her if she refused.
She said she had heard Gabriel Hesse, now 43, talk about his father when she was home during Gabriel's daily visits with her husband.
"He expressed how much he didn't like him," she said of Gabriel's comments about his father.
Jane King told police during the investigation that her husband had told her that Gabriel wanted to hurt his father because, when his father was dead, Gabriel "gets all the money, everything, the car, the trailer, all the money in the bank, everything," according to a police affidavit.
After Jane King admitted to the defense lawyer on Thursday that she may have failed to tell police about hearing Gabriel make such statements, the prosecutor brought out on redirect examination that she had told police about Gabriel's statements to her husband. Jane King went on to testify that she had been present and had heard Gabriel make those statements.
Jane King also acknowledged that she once had a drug problem, involving two years of abuse of the opioid prescription drug Percocet. But she said she overcame it.
Police learned of Halsey Hesse's death after Gabriel Hesse called them on the morning of Oct. 9, 2019. Halsey's body was lying amid large amounts of blood on the kitchen floor of his Fairway Drive mobile home.
Members of the state police Central District Major Crime Squad, who did the crime-scene investigation, noticed and photographed shoe prints in the blood on the floor.
Lisa Ragazza, who specializes in shoe and tire prints at Connecticut's Forensic Science Laboratory in Meriden, testified Thursday that there were similarities between the prints in the blood and the soles of a pair of sneakers found under Gabriel Hesse's mobile home at 255-257 South Main St. in East Windsor.
As to one print that was photographed with a ruler beside it, Ragazza said it was "consistent" in design, physical size, and shape with the sneakers. Forensic scientists use the word consistent to mean that something could have come from a particular source, but could have come from other sources as well — in this case other sneakers of the same design as those found under Gabriel Hesse's mobile home.
Ragazza found similarities between other bloody shoe prints and the sneakers. But she said she couldn't compare the size of several prints because they hadn't been photographed with rulers. She said movement had affected the prints and that, in some cases, multiple prints overlapped.
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