Crime & Safety
Emotions Raw at Marriott Murder Trial
Seth Mazzaglia is accused of raping and murdering Elizabeth Marriott in 2012.
"I heard a scream ... a bloodcurdling scream."
A woman living near where Elizabeth "Lizzi" Marriott was said to be murdered on Oct. 9, 2012, testified May 29 what she heard that night. "It was chilling," Rosemary Macaione said.
She did not call police. Asked on the stand whether that bothered her, she replied, "Every day."
As the Seth Mazzaglia murder trial resumes Friday in Strafford County Superior Court in Dover, N.H., jurors are hearing some incredibly emotional and uncomfortable testimony. Attorneys are piling up and picking apart evidence. It runs from the ordinary, like simple text messages between friends, to the lurid and obscene, like sadomasochistic bondage and a young woman being strangled to death.
Witnesses called to testify Thursday included Marriott's aunt, a state turnpikes administrator, a guy with whom she worked at Target, and her former girlfriend.
The prosecution is methodically trying to build its case, to convince jurors beyond a reasonable doubt that Mazzaglia was the conniving, sadomasochistic sex killer when Marriott spurned his advances.
"He committed despicable crimes against his victim, and since then he has literally been trying to get away with murder," Prosecutor Peter Hinckley said during opening arguments Wednesday.
Defense Attorney Joachim Barth casts Mazzaglia's former girlfriend, Kat McDonough, as the one responsible for Marriott's death. McDonough, who struck a plea deal last year, is expected to testify in the trial and the defense is surely to continue to portray her as the dominant and psychologically unstable force in the relationship.
As the trial continues for a fourth day, there remains a palpable loss amid the proceedings. The opening statements circled it a couple of times: That after Lizzi Marriott's body was dumped off a ledge on Peirce Island in Portsmouth in 2012, her body has never been found. She has been "lost to the sea."
The trial resumes May 30 at 9 a.m.
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