[B]URLINGTON — In the days before driving the wrong way on the interstate and getting into a crash that killed five teens, Steven Bourgoin got many calls from financial institutions and dialed a bankruptcy lawyer, a detective testified Thursday in the Williston’s man murder trial.
Cari Crick of the Vermont State Police took the witness stand on the ninth day of Bourgoin’s trial, telling jurors about information she gleaned from records from his Verizon and Facebook accounts.
Bourgoin, 38, is standing trial on five counts of second-degree murder in the death of the five teens in the Oct. 8, 2016, crash on Interstate 89 in Williston.
“Did you add up how many calls he got from creditors on Oct. 7,” Chittenden County Deputy State’s Attorney Susan Hardin, a prosecutor, asked Crick.
As she spoke, a display of information about Bourgoin’s calls and texts from the day before the fatal crash were projected on a courtroom wall for the jury to see.
“I did,” Crick replied. “That particular day there were at least eight.”
Also, according to the detective, the records show at 5:43 p.m. on that Friday before the Saturday crash a call to Todd Taylor.
“Do you know who Todd Taylor is?” Hardin asked.
“Yes,” Crick replied.
“Who is Todd Taylor?” the prosecutor followed up.
“He’s a bankruptcy attorney, among other things,” Crick replied.
Also, according to those records, Crick testified, that in the days before the crash, Bourgoin called a company she described as one that helps people who owe more than $10,000 in taxes.
The detective was called to the stand Thursday by the prosecution to help rebut Bourgoin’s defense team’s assertion that he was “legally insane” at the time of the fatal crash.
Two forensic psychiatrists, including one initially hired by the prosecution, testified this week for the defense. They both said they concluded that Bourgoin was insane at the time of the crash.
Those doctors both told the jury about interviews they had with Bourgoin where he recounted receiving message through his electronic devices he believed came from the government, and they were telling him he had been tapped for a top-secret mission.
Prosecutors have painted a picture of Bourgoin as being in a rage, and possibly suicidal at that time, upset over his finances and a child-custody dispute with his former girlfriend.
The Friday before the late Saturday night crash, he had also quit his job at Lake Champlain Chocolates in Williston where he worked as a shipping associate saying that he wasn’t making enough money there, a witness testified earlier in the trial.
Prosecutors plan to call their own expert to the stand Friday, who is expected to testify that he concluded Bourgoin was not insane.
Closing arguments in the case are expected Monday, with jury deliberations to follow.
Bourgoin, according to police, was behind the wheel of his 2012 Toyota Tacoma pickup truck driving the wrong way in the southbound lane of I-89 when he crashed into the 2004 Volkswagen Jetta with the five teenagers inside.
The central Vermont teens killed in the crash had been on their way home from a concert in South Burlington.
They 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.
Moments following the crash, after the first Williston police officer arrived on the scene and ran to help the teens trapped in their vehicle, Bourgoin drove off in that cruiser.
He then returned to the scene minutes later, and slammed into his already heavily damaged pickup at more than 100 mph.
Crick, the detective who testified Thursday, said in addition to looking at Bourgoin’s calls, she reviewed his text messages in the days leading up the crash.
“Ever come across any language that was of concern to you, anything about his mental health?” Hardin, the prosecutor, asked.
“No,” the detective replied.
Crick also testified about information police obtained from Bourgoin’s Facebook account.
The detective recounted how Bourgoin had told psychiatrists who had interviewed him that the Friday evening before the crash he followed messages he believed he was getting from the government, leading him to a field and eventually to spot along the Winooski River.
Bourgoin at one point destroyed his phone, throwing it in the water.
“Mr. Bourgoin explained that while he was in this wooded area, this field, this path, in Essex he was getting those messages from Facebook that were telling him where to go,” Crick testified.
“One that he was very specific about was receiving a Facebook message from a childhood friend, Mr. Chris Whitney,” Crick said. “He explained that when he got that message he found it very weird because he hadn’t spoken to Whitney really since grade school, it had been years.”
As a result, Crick said, Bourgoin said he believed it was actually the government reaching out to him through Whitney, or through Whitney’s Facebook page.
The detective said the messages police obtained from Bourgoin’s account showed that he initiated the contact through Facebook with Whitney that Friday evening.
“You have a lot of hot looking friend, were you really in the movies????” Bourgoin wrote, according to a Facebook message sent just after 8 p.m. that Friday and projected Thursday on the courtroom wall for the jury.
A few minutes after Bourgoin sent that message, Whitney replied that he had been in movies, and asked Bourgoin what he has been doing.
“Just hanging in Vermont looking up old photos,” Bourgoin wrote back. “Just thought I would say hi. Water under the bridge.”
Robert Katims, Bourgoin’s attorney, in cross-examining Crick, asked the detective about the multiple calls from the PayPal creditor, some of them coming right after another.
“Did you do any research on who PayPal creditor is?” Katims asked.
“I just know my knowledge of PayPal, which is that it is a financial institution,” she said. “It’s a bank.”
“Are you aware that PayPal creditor has been the subject of illegal robocall lawsuits,” the defense attorney asked.
“No,” Crick replied.
Katims also asked the detective if it was possible that Whitney had indeed made the first Facebook contact with Bourgoin — though not necessarily through a message.
“Is it possible that Mr. Whitney posted something on Mr. Bourgoin’s page and then Mr. Bourgoin liked it?” Katims said.
“It’s possible, but I don’t have enough information,” she responded.
Sy Ray of the Arizona-based company, Zetx, also testified Thursday, called by the defense to bolster Bourgoin’s version of events, by verifying his movements. Ray described Zetx as a firm that uses data to track where operating cellphones travel.
Ray said he found that Bourgoin’s phone did stop working that Friday evening before the crash in an area near the Winooski River, adding, “It could be just slightly off each side of the river.”
However, Bourgoin also had recounted to both the psychiatrists who interviewed him a trip he made to Montpelier a day or two before the crash, believing he had received messages telling him to go to the state’s capital.
Ray testified Friday, under cross-examination by the prosecution, that he saw no evidence of Bourgoin’s cellphone in Montpelier.
“I could not find any time in the records that this device was ever in that area,” Ray said.
Hardin, in questioning Crick later, asked if Bourgoin had ever received the last Facebook message Whitney, his childhood friend, had sent him the Friday evening before the Saturday night crash.
Crick said given that the phone stopped working shortly around that time, she had no idea.
Whitney’s final message to Bourgoin was projected on the courtroom wall along with the earlier words they exchanged.
It read, “Cheers buddy.”
