LAW OFFICES OF PETER J. CYR

Portland Press Hearald

January 9, 2014

By Scott Dolan sdolan@pressherald.com
Staff Writer

Attorneys for a New York man accused of murdering Margarita Fisenko Scott, whose body was found inside an SUV in a hotel parking lot in Portland last winter, are trying to have statements he made to police before his arrest thrown out.

click image to enlarge

Flanked by attorneys Peter Cyr and Dylan Boyd, Anthony Pratt makes his initial court appearance on April 26, 2013, to face a charge of murder in the death of Margarita Fisenko Scott.

 

Regardless of how the judge rules on whether what Anthony Pratt Jr. told police is admissable or inadmissable, his attorneys and prosecutors say the case against him is going to trial. Jury selection is scheduled for March 7, with opening statements to follow on March 10.

Justice Joyce Wheeler made no immediate ruling Thursday after hearing arguments in Cumberland County Unified Criminal Court in Portland on three motions by Pratt’s attorneys, Dylan Boyd and Peter Cyr, but she set the timetable for all final filings required for the trial to go forward.

“I’m not going to rule now from the bench. I’ll try to have a decision quickly,” Wheeler said.

Pratt, 20, of Queens, N.Y., is charged with killing Scott on Nov. 10, 2012 in an apartment at 266 W. Concord St. in Portland with a single gunshot to the neck.

Scott was initially believed to be missing until her husband, Cary Scott, found her body in the back of a snow-covered Chevrolet Trailblazer on Jan. 17, 2013, in the parking lot of Motel 6 on Riverside Street.

Scott, 29, had been married for less than a year. She was having an affair with Pratt at the time she was killed, going back and forth between Pratt, who was staying with friends in Portland, and her husband in Westbrook, according to police.

Police ruled out Cary Scott as a suspect early on and focused on three people as the investigation into Scott’s death proceeded – Pratt and the couple he was living with at 266 W. Concord St., Christopher and Tunile Jennings.

Christopher Jennings had had sex with Scott shortly before her death. A DNA testing on the murder weapon, a .40-caliber pistol, matched both Jennings’ profiles and ruled out Pratt. But investigators obtained an arrest warrant for Pratt after finding his DNA on both a piece of chewing gum and piece of paper used to cover up a bullet hole in the apartment, the lead investigator in the case, Portland police Detective Richard Vogel, testified Thursday.

Pratt has pleaded not guilty to a single count of murder and has been held without bail since his arrest in New York last April.

Boyd and Cyr argued in their motions that Vogel should have read Pratt his Miranda rights – that he didn’t have to talk and was entitled to a lawyer – during his first interview at the Portland Police Department on Feb. 17, 2013. They said Vogel should have clarifed when Pratt asked whether he needed a lawyer during a second interview at a New York City police station on April 2, 2013. And they argued a photo array shown to a witness to identify Pratt was unfairly suggestive.

A prosecutor, Assistant Attorney General Donald Macomber, made counter arguments to each of those contentions, calling Vogel and two other Portland police detectives as witnesses.

One new detail came out during Vogel’s testimony, that police never ruled out the Jennings as suspects in Scott’s death even as they arrested Pratt last April.

“You had a warrant for his arrest, but you still considered Chris and Tunile (Jennings) suspects?” Boyd asked Vogel under cross-examination.

“Not as much,” Vogel responded.

Neither Christopher nor Tunile Jennings have been charged in connection with Scott’s death.

Scott Dolan can be reached at 791-6304 or at:

sdolan@pressherald.com

Posted: January 9

Portland Press Herald

January 8, 2014

By Scott Dolan sdolan@pressherald.com
Staff Writer

Attorneys for two Biddeford men charged with attempted murder for a brutal 2011 attack on a local man are accusing prosecutors of deliberately withholding key evidence.

Just days before Tamer Tilahun, 23, and Jonathan Dowd, 22, were due to stand trial in November in York County Superior Court, their attorneys discovered they were never given audio recordings of witness interviews, including one in which the victim’s girlfriend described yelling out racial insults at Tilahun, who is African-American, a short time before the attack.

The attorneys allege that the victim may have been the aggressor in the incident.

The revelation caused the scheduled Nov. 18 trial to be postponed. Tilahun and Dowd, who had been jailed for two years awaiting trial, were released and their bail reduced from $50,000 cash to zero.

Their attorneys, Amy Fairfield and Peter Cyr, argued on Tuesday before Justice Thomas Warren in Cumberland County Unified Criminal Court that the York County District Attorney’s Office had acted “maliciously” or “deliberately” by withholding the audio recordings. They are seeking to have the cases against their clients dismissed.

“Once you add these three audiotapes into the mix, you have a different case, judge,” Fairfield said to Warren. “The question then is, what else was withheld?”

The lead investigator in the case, Saco police Sgt. Corey Huntress, testified Tuesday that he mistakenly thought he had shared the audio recordings with the DA’s office long before November. “My total error,” he said.

The DA’s office didn’t hand over the recordings to the defense until Nov. 6, less than two weeks before the scheduled start of the trial, according to Cyr and Fairfield.

Tilahun and Dowd have each pleaded not guilty to five charges for the fight that hospitalized Derrick Connors of Biddeford. The charges are attempted murder, elevated aggravated assault, two counts of criminal threatening with a weapon, and one count of committing a bail violation.

The fight started on the Elm Street bridge, which links Saco and Biddeford, around 1 a.m. on Nov. 21, 2011, an hour or more after the racially charged exchange between Connors’ friends and Tilahun and Down, according to Huntress’ testimony and the recordings played in court Tuesday.

Tilahun and Dowd are accused of stabbing Connors, now 29, on the bridge and then fighting him again on the Biddeford side of the bridge. The exchange ended with either Tilahun or Dowd bashing Connors in the face with a brick. Different witnesses gave differing accounts of who used the knife, who wielded the brick and who initiated the fights.

Defense attorneys say prosecutors and police failed to disclose the heated exchange between the two sides leading up the fight.

“The issue in this case is who is the aggressor,” Cyr said.

Connors’ girlfriend, Sally Hansen, told police in the newly released audio recording that Connors had been drinking coffee brandy while they were visiting Savannah Barnes’ second-story apartment in Saco when he accidentally knocked out a window screen. Tilahun and Dowd were on the street below and crushed the screen, prompting Barnes to demand repayment.

While Tilahun and Dowd were in Barnes’ apartment paying her for the damage to the screen, Connors swore at them at least twice. Connors, Hansen and Barnes then followed them out of the apartment, where Hansen and Barnes shouted racial insults loud enough for the two men to hear, according to the audio recording played in court.

“(Barnes) was saying what a scumbag that black kid has always been,” Hansen said on the recording.

Hansen added that she yelled at Tilahun, calling him a “dirty (racial slur).”

“I don’t like black people, OK?” Hansen told Huntress in the recording.

Connors told police in other recordings played in court Tuesday that he encountered Tilahun and Dowd again during the early hours of Nov. 21, 2011, while walking home from a bar in Saco. According to Connors, the pair immediately charged to attack him. Other witnesses have said they tried to restrain Connors from chasing the men off the bridge.

The judge made no immediate ruling and scheduled testimony to resume next week, when Deputy District Attorney Justina McGettigan will be allowed to question witnesses.

“I agree there was a discovery violation. I think that’s a given. The question is whether it was malicious or deliberate,” Warren said.

Scott Dolan can be reached at 791-6304 or at:

sdolan@pressherald.com

Portland Press Herald

July 10, 2013

PORTLAND – A woman who lived with Marguerita Fisenko Scott last year testified Wednesday that she threatened to kill Scott on the night police say she was murdered.

The woman's husband had sex with Scott shortly before she died.

But police say it was Scott's fiance, Anthony Pratt Jr., who killed her, stuffed her half-naked body in the back seat of her sport utility vehicle and left it in a motel parking lot, where it was found two months later.

Pratt is being held without bail in the Cumberland County Jail, charged with murdering Scott by shooting her once in the neck. The state wants to hold him until his trial, which might not start until early next year.

Pratt was in Cumberland County Unified Criminal Court on Wednesday to argue that he should be released on bail.

"The state is trying to extinguish someone's right to bail," said one of Pratt's attorneys, Peter Cyr. "After all, Mr. Pratt is presumed innocent."

Cyr argued that there is ample evidence pointing at others as more likely suspects than his client. But prosecutors say the key evidence points to Pratt, and he had a motive.

Pratt was jealous of Scott's estranged husband, with whom she had spent the prior night, and Pratt was a suspect in an assault on her that morning.

And after the shooting, "He left town and basically never came back looking for her, never called her -- his fiancee," said Assistant Attorney General Lisa Marchese after the hearing.

Through four hours of testimony, Pratt sat impassively. Justice Roland Cole made no ruling on bail for Pratt. The hearing will resume Monday.

A key witness in the case testified Wednesday.

Tunile Jennings lived at 266 West Concord St. in Portland with her husband, Christopher Jennings. Pratt and Scott were staying there as well.

Tunile Jennings testified that she was preparing to celebrate her husband's birthday with him in the Old Port on Nov. 10 when she warned Scott not to have sex with Christopher Jennings.

"I said I'll kill you if you do it," she said. "I was drunk and I was wasted. I wasn't trying to threaten her or anything. ... It was a figure of speech."

Tunile Jennings said she didn't know until two weeks ago that her husband did have sex with Scott.

On Nov. 10, Pratt and Scott agreed to watch the Jenningses' children -- an infant and a 4-year-old. Tunile Jennings called at 1 a.m., when the bars closed, and told Scott they didn't need to be picked up because they were taking a cab to PT's Showclub, a strip club on Riverside Street.

She called again at 2 a.m. and got Pratt, she testified.

When they returned to their apartment, Pratt was asleep on the couch. Jennings asked where Scott was and he said she hadn't come home after dropping them off in the Old Port.

Portland Detective Rich Vogel testified that 2 a.m. was the time Scott had promised to return the Chevrolet Trailblazer to Cary Scott, her husband, who lived in Westbrook and needed it for work.

The next day, Pratt suddenly said he had to go back to New York to help an elderly man whom he considered a grandfather cope with problems caused by Hurricane Sandy two weeks earlier.

Rudolph DeBetham, 81, testified that he asked Pratt to come to help him days before Scott's death.

When officers went to 266 West Concord St. after Scott's body was found, they found that the apartment building had been sold and was being renovated, and that the Jenningses and Pratt had moved away.

Evidence technicians found a pool of dried blood in the basement and a trail of blood leading to it from the living room, Vogel said. Someone had tried to wash away the blood before the renovations had started.

Police also found a bullet hole in a wall that had been filled with chewing gum. A DNA sample recovered from the gum and a piece of paper pressed against the gum matched Pratt's.

Vogel said a neighbor remembered seeing a man having trouble loading trash bags into the Trailblazer around 2 a.m.

Police say that when they searched the Jennings' new apartment in Portland, they found the .40-caliber handgun that was used to shoot Scott, as well as crack cocaine and cash.

Pratt's attorney, Cyr, said after the hearing that the state's case is implausible.

Nobody in the dense neighborhood reported hearing a gunshot, he said. And the Jenningses noted nothing amiss in their apartment when they returned, so Pratt would have had to shoot Scott, clean up the apartment, then dispose of the body by driving it to the motel two miles away. He then would have had to walk back and fall asleep with an infant in his arms before the Jenningses returned at 3 a.m.

Cyr also noted that people said they saw Scott after Nov. 11, when Pratt was in New York. Investigators say the people were mistaken about when they saw her.

Finally, Cyr said, Pratt's DNA was not on the gun but the Jenningses' was.

David Hench can be contacted at 791-6327 or at:

dhench@pressherald.com

Portland Press Herald

May 17, 2013

By Scott Dolan sdolan@pressherald.com
Staff Writer

PORTLAND – DNA evidence from the gun that police say was used to kill Margarita Fisenko Scott last year in Portland does not match that of the New York man who is charged with murdering her.

A newly unsealed court document says the DNA on the gun matches that of a husband and wife who were renting the apartment where police say Scott was killed. Police discovered that the couple hid the weapon after Scott was shot, according to the document.

Anthony Pratt Jr., 19, of Queens, N.Y., is charged with killing Scott on Nov. 10 in an apartment at 266 W. Concord St. in Portland with a single gunshot to the neck.

Pratt pleaded not guilty to murder on Friday in Cumberland County Unified Criminal Court. After the hearing, Justice Joyce Wheeler unsealed the affidavit that police filed last month to obtain a warrant for Pratt's arrest.

Until Friday, details had not been disclosed regarding what led police to focus on Pratt, how the stolen .40-caliber handgun was recovered, and what happened in the hours before Scott disappeared.

Although the court document answers many of those questions, it does not reveal what happened to Scott from the day she disappeared until Jan. 17, when her husband, Cary Scott, found her body in the back of his Chevrolet Trailblazer, which was unattended and covered in snow in the parking lot of the Motel 6 on Riverside Street.

Her body was in the same clothes she had been seen wearing Nov. 10.

Margarita Scott, 29, was married for less than a year. She was having an affair with Pratt at the time she was killed, going back and forth between Pratt, who was staying with friends at 266 W. Concord St., and her husband in Westbrook, says the affidavit written by Portland police Detective Richard Vogel.

On the day she was killed, Scott was at her husband's apartment at 78 Central St. in Westbrook in the morning while he was at work. Witnesses told police that they saw a man matching Pratt's description drag her down the stairs, punch and kick her.

When police arrived, Scott was alone and told them that Pratt had assaulted her, according to Vogel's affidavit.

Cary Scott later told police that his wife had planned to gather her belongings from the apartment in Portland that day and return to him, but he never again saw her alive, the affidavit says.

The couple who rented the apartment, Christopher and Tunile Jennings, told police that Pratt and Scott stayed with them often, and that on the day Scott disappeared, Pratt was upset that she had gone home to her husband and not returned.

The couple also told police that Margarita Scott drove them to the Old Port on the night of Nov. 10 for a night out, while Pratt stayed at home to babysit the Jenningses' children. Margarita Scott dropped them off in her husband's Trailblazer and they never saw her again, the affidavit says.

By the time Scott's body was found, the Jenningses had moved out of the apartment, which by then was under renovation.

In the apartment's living room, police say they found traces of Scott's blood, and a bullet in a hole in a wall that had been plugged with a piece of green gum and a sheet of white paper.

The Jenningses told police that when they returned home from the Old Port on Nov. 10, Pratt was alone with their children. They said Pratt left early the next day to return to New York by bus.

Christopher Jennings initially told police that he believed Pratt had taken the gun to New York with him, but police later found the gun in the attic of the Jenningses' new apartment, the affidavit says.

"Christopher (Jennings) was confronted with the discovery of the gun in his attic and he admitted it was the gun that he and Pratt had purchased," Vogel said in his affidavit.

The Jenningses told police that they had found the gun hidden above a ceiling tile in the bedroom of the apartment on West Concord Street while they were moving out and hid it in their new apartment, the affidavit says.

Tests on the gun showed the DNA of at least three people, including Christopher and Tunile Jennings, but not Pratt. Other witnesses told police that they had seen Pratt handle the gun while wearing latex gloves, according to the affidavit.

Pratt is next scheduled to appear in court in July for a hearing to determine whether he will continue to be held without bail. His attorneys, Peter Cyr and Dylan Boyd, had asked for the hearing to be delayed to give them time to gather witnesses.

"We need Anthony's grandfather there. There has been some suggestion that Anthony's departure for New York after the killing was unexpected. He had planned to return to New York to help his grandfather repair from Hurricane Sandy," Boyd said.

Boyd said he and Cyr are seeking a subpoena requiring the Jenningses to testify at the hearing.

Scott Dolan can be contacted at 791-6304 or at:

sdolan@pressherald.com

Portland Press Herald

May 14, 2013

By Scott Dolan sdolan@pressherald.com

PORTLAND — The New York man who is accused of murdering Margarita Fisenko Scott, whose body was found in her vehicle in a motel parking lot, has been indicted by

Anthony Pratt Jr., 19, of Queens, N.Y., had been scheduled to appear in Cumberland County Unified Criminal Court Tuesday morning to be arraigned on a charge of murder and for a hearing on whether he will be allowed an opportunity to be freed on bail. But one of his attorneys filed a motion to continue the hearing until a witness is available to testify. No new date has been set.

Police say Pratt killed Scott, 29, of Westbrook, with a single gunshot in the first-floor apartment at 266 West Concord St. in Portland on Nov. 11, weeks before her body was found in the back of her 2002 Chevrolet Trailblazer in the parking lot of the Motel 6 on Riverside Street.

Scott’s estranged husband, Cary Scott, found the SUV on Jan. 17, covered in snow. He brushed off the snow, got in and then saw his wife’s body in the back seat, police have said.

Justice Joyce Wheeler had ordered the affidavit supporting the warrant for Pratt’s arrest sealed at his initial court appearance in Maine on April 26. She said she would lift the seal following his indictment and following Tuesday’s court appearance.

One of Pratt’s attorneys, Peter Cyr, said after his appearance in court last month that the case against Pratt has “some holes” and that Pratt agreed to come to Maine from New York to fight the charge.

The prosecutor, Assistant Attorney General Lisa Marchese, said Monday that a grand jury has since handed up an indictment.

Cyr said last month that it’s unclear how long Scott’s body was in the SUV and how long the vehicle sat unnoticed in the motel parking lot.

He said the people who lived in the Portland apartment where police say Margarita Scott was shot had no idea that she had died in their home.

Pratt was arrested in New York City on April 2 and was held in custody there before being brought to Portland.

Police have said Pratt and Scott were dating and both occasionally stayed at the apartment on West Concord Street, although neither was a tenant. Pratt came to Maine frequently from New York, but police say they don’t know his connection to this state.

They say they have found the gun that was used in the shooting but it was not found at the apartment. The gun had been stolen in a burglary in central Maine and then sold, but police would not say whether Pratt was the buyer.

The apartment’s tenants moved out before police began investigating there, and the apartment was renovated, Pratt’s attorney has said.

Cyr said he is prepared to hire experts to look into ballistics, blood spatter traces and pathology, and to analyze bullet entry and exit wounds.

Scott’s family emigrated from Kazakhstan to the Portland area. She moved to Maine when she was 14 and graduated from Portland High School.

Her family members have said that Scott was in almost daily contact with her parents, Vladimir and Larisa Fisenko of Westbrook, before she disappeared. Her family, including her husband, contacted police in Westbrook and Portland after she disappeared and reported her vehicle missing.

Staff Writer Scott Dolan can be contacted at: 791-6304 or at sdolan@mainetoday.com