[B]URLINGTON — A federal prosecutor says a Waterford woman told investigators that moments after her boyfriend was shot to death last month she stood over him in the bedroom of the Northeast Kingdom home they shared.
“You hurt me too much,” Krystal Whitcomb, 27, said, according to the prosecutor, as she looked down on the body of Michael Pimental.
Krystal Whitcomb told investigators that her boyfriend had been abusing her, and she went to her father, Shawn Whitcomb, and told him she needed help, Assistant U.S. Attorney Wendy Fuller said during a hearing Monday in federal court in Burlington.
Krystal Whitcomb, according to the prosecutor, told investigators that she spoke to her father about the abuse she suffered from 37-year-old Pimental, saying, “I want shit to be done.”
Her father, after his arrest on federal drug charges last month on the same day authorities discovered Pimental’s slain body on the side of a rural road about 15 miles from his home, asked to speak to one of the detectives “father to father,” Fuller said.
Shawn Whitcomb then told that investigator, “I did what I did to protect Krystal,” the prosecutor told the judge Monday.
Those statements recounted by Fuller in court Monday from separate police interviews both Whitcombs provided to investigators are the latest details revealed in the ongoing homicide probe into Pimental’s death.
The hearing Monday was held to determine if Magistrate Judge John Conroy would grant a request from Michael Straub, Krystal Whitcomb’s attorney, to release his client so she could attend a residential drug treatment program.
No one has yet been charged in Pimental’s death more than a month after the fatal shooting.
Krystal Whitcomb as well as her father have both been charged with federal drug and firearms offenses. They have both pleaded not guilty to the charges against them and have been ordered jailed pending trials.
Conroy rejected the request Monday to release Krystal Whitcomb to a treatment facility. “It’s clear to me that Ms. Whitcomb is a danger to the community,” the judge said.
He sided with the prosecutor who argued that while Krystal Whitcomb wasn’t necessarily a risk to flee, she was a risk to public safety given the allegations of dealing “significant” amounts of heroin and fentanyl in Caledonia County, and illegally possessing firearms.
The hearing Monday follows a court filing last week by Fuller claiming publicly for the first time that Whitcomb and her 51-year-old father were involved in Pimental’s killing.
In court Monday, the prosecutor provided a much more detailed look into the homicide investigation as she pushed to keep Krystal Whitcomb in custody.
Krystal Whitcomb, dressed in gray sweatshirt and sweatpants, sat at the same defense table Monday, though separated by their attorneys, as her father, who was wearing green prison garb.
Fuller told the judge that the two Whitcombs along with Pimental had been targets of a Vermont Drug Task Force investigation involving confidential informants that started in July.
Fuller said in court Monday that when Krystal Whitcomb was arrested Oct. 14, the same day that Pimental’s slain body was found, she was in his Cadillac just over the border in New Hampshire.
As a result of that traffic stop, Fuller said, police recovered three firearms that Krystal Whitcomb said all belonged to her, including a Hi-Point .380 caliber handgun, a Hi-Point .40 caliber handgun and a Ruger .38 Special revolver.
Also in the vehicle, the prosecutor said, police recovered more than 2,000 baggies of heroin and $20,000 in cash, “in stacks of $10s and $20s.”
When questioned by investigators, Fuller said, Krystal Whitcomb at times provided conflicting statements about Pimental’s homicide, including who actually pulled the trigger in the fatal shooting, saying another man was also involved.
Fuller wouldn’t comment after the hearing Monday on the identity of that other man, who was not named in court or in filings.
The prosecutor did say that Krystal Whitcomb was consistent in her police interview in saying that the shooting took place inside the Waterford home on Duck Pond Road on Oct. 13, a day before Pimental’s body was discovered.
Fuller said video evidence from a nearby Walmart a couple days before the slaying showed Krystal Whitcomb purchasing four boxes of ammunition, including two boxes of 9mm Luger bullets.
The fatal shots, the prosecutor said, were fired from a 9mm Luger, with a shell casing recovered from inside the Waterford home.
The weapon used in the killing has not yet been recovered, Fuller said.
The prosecutor did say that blood evidence from Michael Pimental has been located in the back of the Cadillac that Krystal Whitcomb was in when she was arrested.
Straub, Krystal Whitcomb’s attorney, said in court Monday that his client was an addict in need of treatment. He said that defendants with charges similar to those that his client is currently facing are “almost” always allowed to be released to take part in residential drug treatment.
The defense attorney added that in listening to the recording of Krystal Whitcomb’s statement to police, it is not clear at all to him that she was asking her father to harm her boyfriend.
Straub described his client as a “victim,” adding, “If Mr. Whitcomb and someone else took matters into their own hands, that’s not Ms. Whitcomb’s fault.”
