A Bennington man who has been in and out of jail in recent years pleaded not guilty Friday to a charge of second-degree murder in his ex-girlfriend’s killing three summers ago.
The defendant, Deven Moffitt, 32, appeared in court remotely from Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield, where he has been held since his arrest Wednesday in the death of Jessica Hildenbrandt.
Superior Judge Cortland Corsones, of Bennington County, granted the state’s request to hold Moffitt without bail after the prosecutor said his charge carries a maximum penalty of life in prison and contended the evidence of guilt is great.
Public defender Fred Bragdon didn’t contest the state’s request to keep Moffitt in jail until a weight-of-the-evidence hearing, which will determine his custody status while awaiting trial. The court scheduled the hearing for next month.
Moffitt’s arrest in Bennington on Wednesday morning came three years after police said the remains of Hildenbrandt, 43, of Ballston Spa, New York, were discovered near an old gravel pit in Searsburg. Detectives believe she was killed in 2019, sometime between July 14 and 15.
The abandoned gravel pit attracts hikers and campers. On Sept. 17, 2019, a man apparently stumbled upon what looked like a human jawbone. Vermont State Police, who were called to investigate, reported uncovering a shallow grave with human remains as well as more human bones nearby.
It took authorities until July 2020 to determine that the remains were those of Hildenbrandt. That September, Vermont’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ruled that she had been the victim of a homicide; her manner of death was undetermined.
In the next two years, according to court documents, police interviewed Hildenbrandt’s family, friends, acquaintances and people whose lives intersected with hers and Moffitt’s.
Investigators learned that she and Moffit became romantically involved in November 2017, while he was serving a prison sentence in Vermont. They were introduced by a common friend.
She lived with Moffitt’s mother in Bennington, as her caregiver, for about half a year until July 2019. Moffit’s mother told police that one day, Hildenbrandt packed all her belongings and left with an unknown man.
Hildenbrandt’s friends said her relationship with Moffitt was characterized by frequent and explosive arguments on issues such as money.
One friend said Moffitt was accustomed to women who didn’t fight back, and she told Hildenbrandt “there was no doubt in her mind that when Deven got out of jail he was going to kill her,” according to a statement of probable cause written by the case’s lead investigator, state police Detective Sgt. Samuel Truex.
In March 2019, according to Truex’s affidavit, Hildenbrandt told the Windsor County State’s Attorney’s Office and later a state police detective that she feared for her life once Moffitt got out of prison. She said she’d broken up with him at least a dozen times but kept going back.
“You know I am coming home, and I will kill you,” she quoted Moffitt as telling her. “If you are not going to be with me after all this time, I will kill you.”
The affidavit indicated Hildenbrandt told Detective Sgt. Jesse Robson that Moffitt subjected her to emotional abuse, including trying to control her, accusing her of infidelity and calling her demeaning names.
Hildenbrandt also said he’d asked her to smuggle drugs into prison for him, such as sewing into his clothes strips of suboxone prescribed to her. The drug treats opioid dependence. Moffitt apparently told her to stop taking her medication and save it for him.
State police said she eventually stopped cooperating in their investigation. A year later, after her remains were identified, they found out she used an assumed name to bail Moffitt out of jail on July 8, 2019, when he’d been held on a new charge.
A witness, who wasn’t identified, told investigators they believed Hildenbrandt had been stealing from Moffitt, according to Truex’s affidavit. The person reportedly told police Moffitt had made comments to them about having gotten rid of someone and wanted their help moving a body.
Another unnamed witness said Moffitt had talked about strangling a woman who tried to take his money and getting rid of a cellphone, the affidavit stated.
Police said the investigation that led them to Moffitt included analyzing the content and location data of cellphone calls, text messages and call records with the Vermont Department of Corrections.
Authorities said the last time Hildenbrandt’s cellphone transmitted data in her established pattern was around the afternoon of July 14, 2019, in the area of Moffitt’s mother’s residence.
Hildenbrandt was also known as Jessica Bidot and “Red.” Her obituary described her as someone who loved to spend time with family, including a son, and friends at The Great Sacandaga Lake in the Adirondack Mountains of New York.
She used to do office work in the automotive industry, according to her death certificate.
Police said she was last in touch with family in July 2019, a few days before authorities said she was killed.
On Friday, Moffitt was charged in federal court with three felony offenses: possessing with intent to distribute controlled substances, possessing a firearm having previously been convicted of a crime punishable by a prison term of more than a year, and possessing a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime.
According to a police affidavit filed in court, when Moffitt tried to flee from arresting officers in Bennington on Wednesday, a bystander saw him place a bag inside a trash container.
A search of the bag revealed 3,750 bags of suspected fentanyl, “distribution quantities” of crack and powder cocaine, as well as two loaded handguns. Police said they also found on Moffitt some $16,000 in cash.
If convicted of all the federal charges, he would be facing a mandatory minimum prison sentence of five years to a maximum of life, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a release. The sentence would be informed by the U.S Sentencing Guidelines.
The date of Moffitt’s initial appearance in federal court has not yet been set.
