A little more than three years after a double slaying in Woodbury, a Connecticut man appeared in court Wednesday, accused of carrying out the killings over an alleged $20,000 drug debt.
Investigators allege in newly released documents that while Manuel Gomez denies a role in the killings of Carol Fradette and David Thompson, a cellphone dropped at the scene — containing his DNA, messages from him and data that tracks that phone’s location — tell a different story.
After investigators provided Gomez with records mapping the phone’s location and calls, he asked if he needed a lawyer, according to the documents made public Wednesday.
Detective Sgt. James Vooris of the Vermont State Police replied that he could not give legal advice, the records stated.
“Gomez then advised that, by showing him these records, we were basically saying that he did it,” Vooris wrote in an affidavit in support of the charges against Gomez. Vooris added that Gomez then said to him, “This is what you’re saying. You’re asking me that, you’re asking me that, you basically saying I did it.”
Vooris wrote that, when he asked Gomez if he did commit the murders, Gomez replied, “No, I didn’t.”
Gomez, 32, of Hartford, Connecticut, pleaded not guilty in Washington County Superior criminal court in Barre to charges of aggravated murder and arson in the deaths of Fradette, 29, and Thompson, 48, at their homes on Bliss Road in Woodbury on Oct. 30, 2018.
The hearing Wednesday took place on the same day Gomez was released from federal custody in New York, where he completed a sentence on an unrelated conviction for possessing a firearm after being convicted of a felony.
Judge Kevin Griffin, presiding at the arraignment on the murder charges in Vermont, agreed to a request from Washington County State’s Attorney Rory Thibault to hold Gomez in custody for lack of $750,000 bail.
Attorney Maggie Vincent, representing Gomez, did not contest the bail request.
A warrant for Gomez’s arrest was issued last week on charges of aggravated murder and arson charges in Vermont.
The bodies of Thompson and Fradette were found in two residences, about 150 feet apart, on the property in Woodbury. Thompson died of multiple gunshot wounds, and Fradette was killed by blunt force trauma and a single gunshot wound to her head, the state’s medical examiner’s office ruled.
The couple’s three dogs were also shot and killed, and the residences were set ablaze late on the night of Oct. 30, 2018, according to police, an apparent attempt to conceal the homicides.
Few details of the investigation had been released over the past three years.
The documents released Wednesday after the arraignment stated that Gomez had been selling “large quantities” of heroin to Thompson and that Thompson owed him more than $20,000.
According to witnesses, Gomez also talked of knowing that Thompson had a safe at the property.
A cellphone, which investigators discovered on the ground at the crime scene, also yielded several clues, according to the documents — Gomez’s DNA, messages from his email accounts, and data that showed several trips between Hartford, Connecticut, and the property in Woodbury, including a visit on the night of the slayings.
While Gomez admitted to investigators he had been selling heroin in Vermont from 2015 to 2019, he denied killing Thompson and Fradette, the documents stated.
He also had a pending drug-dealing charge in Windsor County dating back several years.
If convicted, Gomez faces up to life in prison.
