White River Junction
Peggy Ainsworth testified on Monday in the trial of Emily Perkins, who has pleaded not guilty to charges of murder and attempted murder.
“When you are young and in love, you make mistakes,” Ainsworth said on the seventh day of the trial in Windsor Superior Court . “This was a mistake. She shouldn’t have confessed to something she didn’t do; now we are bearing the consequences of that.”
Perkins lied to police to afford her terminally ill husband, Michael, as much time with the couple’s two young children as possible, Ainsworth said. Michael Perkins died from brain cancer in January 2014, more than two years after the shooting that left Scott Hill dead and Emma Jozefiak seriously wounded.
Shortly after the November 2011 shooting, Emily Perkins told police she accidentally shot Jozefiak after Jozefiak shot Hill inside his Bethel trailer. Hill, 48, was found dead at the scene and Jozefiak, then 19, suffered multiple gunshot wounds but survived.
About three months after Michael Perkins died, his friend, Ryan Pettit, brought forward a letter purportedly written by Michael Perkins in which he claims responsibility for the shooing.
“(Emily) wanted Michael to be with the children as long as possible so they would hopefully remember their dad when he was gone,” Ainsworth said on Monday. “I’m assuming that probably if Michael had been arrested for this murder he would have been placed in jail and he would have died in jail quicker than had he been home.”
Emily Perkins, who is scheduled to testify today, dabbed her eyes with her sleeve during some of her mother’s testimony.
Ainsworth, a Royalton selectwoman who runs a dairy and vegetable farm with her husband, David, in South Royalton, said she hasn’t read the letter to this day.
“I didn’t want to,” Ainsworth told jurors.
However, she said, she was with her daughter when she first read it.
“(She) looked like a deer caught in headlights,” Ainsworth testified. “She was totally in shock.”
Since learning about the letter and its contents, Ainsworth said, she is unhappy that Michael Perkins didn’t come forward while he was alive.
“He doesn’t say anything … do you find that stunning?” lead prosecutor Christopher Moll asked.
“It makes me angry that it didn’t happen,” Ainsworth testified.
Though Emily Perkins and her mother had contact daily, Ainsworth said, the pair never spoke in detail about the letter or extensively about what happened on Nov. 8, 2011.
Perkins told her mother she accidentally shot Jozefiak after witnessing Jozefiak shoot Hill, but not much else, Ainsworth testified.
Pettit, who completed his testimony on Monday, said Emily Perkins told him the same story.
“What did she tell you?” Moll asked.
“It was an accident,” Pettit said.
Perkins testified last week that Michael Perkins gave him the sealed letter in the hospital parking lot on the day of Perkins’ third brain surgery in August 2012. He handed it over to Perkins’ attorney Devin McLaughlin in April 2014.
“As far as you know, this is the only evidence of Michael being involved?” Moll asked.
“Correct,” Pettit said.
Vermont State Police Lt. Barbara Zonay, who was the case officer for the investigation, said an ink-dating analysis done by an outside agency showed that the letter was written at least six months prior to the July 2014 exam. The purpose of the analysis was to find out if the letter had been written prior to when Michael Perkins died, Moll said. It was written prior to February 2014, Zonay testified. Michael Perkins died in late January 2014.
Nancy McCann, a forensic handwriting and document examiner, also performed an analysis on the letter. McCann — of Boston-based McCann Associates — was hired by the defense to determine its authenticity.
McCann took samples of Emily and Michael Perkins and Pettit’s handwriting and compared them to the handwriting in the letter, she testified Monday.
Through her analysis, McCann ruled out Emily Perkins and Pettit as authors. She couldn’t rule whether Michael Perkins was the author, though, because she didn’t have sufficient handwriting samples.
The only sample she had was a note Michael Perkins wrote to his mom in the summer of 1995.
“Handwriting can change,” McCann said.
The note was written in cursive; the letter was written in print, making them impossible to compare, she added.
The prosecution rested its case on Monday morning after calling dozens of witnesses to the stand over seven days.
The defense called on eight people to testify on Monday, including two young women who said they don’t recall Emily Perkins confessing to the shootings at Angela Hatch’s house in late November or early December 2011. Hatch on Friday testified Perkins told her — in the presence of many others — she killed Hill and accidentally shot Jozefiak.
One of the witnesses, Kayla Conant, formerly of Randolph, called Hatch a “storyteller” who has a reputation for making things up or stretching the truth.
Emily Perkins is due to take the stand at 9 a.m. today in Windsor Superior Court in White River Junction.
Jordan Cuddemi can be reached at jcuddemi@vnews.com or 603-727-3248.