[B]URLINGTON – The ex-girlfriend of the man charged with killing five teenagers in a wrong-way crash on Interstate 89 took the witness stand Friday, recounting Steven Bourgoin’s episodes of violence and increasing mood swings.
Anila Lawrence, shaking, looking toward to the ground with her long, dark hair down over her face, appeared to be trying to avoid making eye contact with anyone in the Burlington courtroom, including Bourgoin, who sat at a defense table about 40 feet away.
Lawrence was the first witness called by the defense as it began presenting its case Friday, the fifth day of Bourgoin’s trial stemming from the late-night Oct. 8, 2016, crash that killed the central Vermont youths.
Robert Katims, Bourgoin’s attorney, had argued during his opening statement to the jury Monday that his client was “legally insane” at the time of the crash.
Lawrence told the jury that her relationship with Bourgoin started in 2008 and all went well for a while as they lived in Williston.
Then, when she found out she was pregnant, and after the child was born, Lawrence testified, Bourgoin’s mood swings increased, as did his complaints about his job and money.
“He would just get really frustrated with finances and stuff and get angry about it,” she testified.
“How about his mood?” Katims asked.
“It fluctuated,” Lawrence replied.
“Did he have mood swings?” Katims asked.
“Yes,” she responded.
“Things you haven’t seen before,” the defense attorney said to her.
“Yes,” Lawrence said.
Later, she said, their doctor had suggested that Bourgoin take anti-depressants.
“At the time he just didn’t want to take any prescription medication like that,” Lawrence testified. “He’s lost friends and stuff to drug overdoses and such and did not want to ever be addicted to anything like that.”
Twice, she said, Bourgoin had been charged with assaulting her, once when they were living in Massachusetts in 2014, and then later in May 2016 when they moved back to Williston.
When questioned Friday for the first time about the violence, she shook and took a long pause before responding.
She told the jury that in the May 2016 incident Bourgoin had become enraged over money struggles and their relationship, including custody of the child.
Lawrence testified that Bourgoin struck and pushed her, and then as she tried to get away, he jumped behind the wheel of the vehicle and drove off with her and the child in the back seat.
As they traveled through nearby towns, she testified, he threatened to drive into a pond and kill them all unless she agreed to shared 50-50 custody of the child with him, and he was screaming about finances.
Lawrence recalled Friday that she told him she would agree to the shared child custody, thinking it was the only way she and the child would safely get home.
That appeared to calm Bourgoin down, and he drove them all back to the Williston residence, Lawrence testified. When he went to take a shower, Lawrence said, she took her daughter, got in the car, and left the residence, going to the police to report the incident.
Bourgoin was charged with domestic assault and unlawful restraint.
The restraining order she obtained prohibited Bourgoin from possessing firearms. According to Lawrence’s testimony Friday, he owned an AR-15 rifle and 9mm Glock handgun.
The prosecution rested its case on Thursday, following four days of testimony that included police officers who responded to the crash scene on the interstate in Williston, motorists who drove up on the site, and crash reconstruction experts.
Katims, as part of the defense case, is expected next week to call an expert hired by the defense, as well as one hired by the prosecution, who have determined that Bourgoin was legally insane at the time of the crash.
The defense attorney has told the jury that Bourgoin had been spending more time online, and believed he was receiving messages through the internet, his cellphone and his vehicle’s radio at the time leading up to the crash.
At that point, the defense attorney said, Bourgoin developed delusions that he was on a government mission.
Lawrence testified Friday that during the 2013 to 2016 time period, Bourgoin was active searching on the internet, with a particular interest in history.
When asked by Katims if Bourgoin had taken her to any of the places he was searching online, Lawrence testified that he had.
“Yes,” she said, “to an abandoned missile silo in Alburgh, Vermont.”
Chittenden County Deputy State’s Attorney Susan Hardin, a prosecutor, during cross-examination asked Lawrence if Bourgoin had ever talked to her about helicopters following him, or about him being on “some type” of mission.
“No,” Lawrence said.
Prosecutors allege Bourgoin was behind the wheel of a 2012 Toyota Tacoma pickup traveling north in the southbound lane of the interstate when he drove, nearly head-on into the 2004 Volkswagen Jetta with the five teens inside.
He slammed into the Jetta traveling at 78 mph, witnesses testified in the case, killing all five teens.
At the scene, witnesses said, he then stole the cruiser of the first responding officer, fled south on the interstate, did a U-turn and then drove back to the scene, slamming into his already heavily damaged Tacoma left there from the earlier crash.
The teens killed in the initial crash were Mary Harris, 16, and Cyrus Zschau, 16, both of Moretown; Liam Hale, 16, of Fayston; Eli Brookens, 16, of Waterbury; and Janie Chase Cozzi, 15, of Fayston.
According to records, toxicology testing revealed Bourgoin had a high level of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, in his system about eight hours after the crash.
Prosecutors have painted a picture of the former Williston man as in a rage over his work, finances, and a custody dispute with Lawrence. The day before the crash, Bourgoin had quit his warehouse job at Lake Champlain Chocolates.
Also, following a family court hearing in September in the child custody dispute, Bourgoin was given only one hour of supervised visitation a week, on Saturday mornings, with the child.
Lawrence testified Friday that Bourgoin had stopped drinking alcohol in 2013, but had been still been using marijuana.
“How much marijuana would say he smoked?” Katims asked.
“I don’t know, I don’t understand that type of stuff,” she said. “I don’t know what a lot or a little would necessarily be.”
Prior to Lawrence taking the stand, Katims, Bourgoin’s attorney, started Friday’s proceedings by asking the judge to enter a “judgment of acquittal” for his client on the five counts of second-degree murder.
He contended during the state’s case, prosecutors did not present any evidence to explain Bourgoin’s actions in the fatal crash.
“What the state chose to do here was to present some of the evidence, not all the evidence, I think they had at their disposal,” Katims said, adding that has a created “a vacuum” of what was going on with Bourgoin.
“What the jury has right now is nothing about who was driving,” Katims said.
He said it would take “speculation and conjecture” for the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Bourgoin’s action met the standard of second-degree murder.
Katims pointed to the testimony earlier in the trial from a police officer who said that motorists drive the wrong way on the interstate for a variety of reasons, from confusion, to impairment, to unfamiliarity with the area.
Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George, the prosecutor, countered that witness, including other motorists who were on the road that night, testified of actions they took when they encountered Bourgoin driving the wrong way on the interstate that night.
Those witnesses, George said, talked of sounding their horns and flashing their headlights, all in an effort to get Bourgoin to turn around.
“There is no evidence that has been presented that this was anything but intentional,” George said.
Judge Kevin Griffin then denied Katims’ motion to dismiss the murder charges, saying the state did not need to prove a motive. He allowed the trial to proceed.
As the questioning of Lawrence neared a close Friday, Hardin, a prosecutor, asked Lawrence if she had talked to Bourgoin about what happened on the night of Oct. 8, 2016.
“Not really, no,” Lawrence replied
“Is it correct that the only thing he ever really told you about what happened on Oct. 8, 2016, was that there were no wrong-way signs on the highway?” Hardin asked.
“Correct,” Lawrence replied.
