The attorney for an 80-year-old New York man who faces two murder counts in the death of his wife’s parents in Danby in 1989 is asking a judge to toss out the charges due to the “unhinged desperation” of investigators to pin the killings on him.
Michael Louise, of Liverpool, New York, is facing two charges of second-degree murder in the deaths of Catherine and George Peacock, who were respectively 73 and 76 when they were killed.
Louise is currently being held for lack of $200,000 bail at the Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield.
Thirty-three years after the Danby couple were fatally stabbed, police arrested and charged Louise last October, citing advances in DNA technology that had resulted in new evidence identifying Louise as the alleged killer. That new evidence, according to court charging documents, was a spot of blood from inside his car in 1989 that matched George Peacock’s blood.
Louise, when interviewed in 1989, according to charging documents, reported that on the day his parents-in-law were killed, he planned to drive to their home to pick up an item he wanted. However, he told investigators, after making it more than halfway to Danby he decided to turn around, the filing added.
Investigators also described as circumstantial evidence a couple of “suicide notes” Louise left for his wife shortly after her parents were killed.
Dan Sedon, Louise’s defense attorney with the firm Sedon & Associates, filed a 20-page motion late last week challenging the prosecution’s case and taking aim at the investigation that led to his client’s arrest.
The Bennington Banner first reported on the motion earlier this week.
Sedon wrote in the filing that early in the probe investigators zeroed in on Louise in an overzealous manner.
“As the case grew colder, investigative objectivity grew scarcer,” Sedon wrote.
The attorney claimed that at one point in the investigation Vermont State Police Detective Sgt. Paul Barci, the lead investigative detective, became “obsessed” at getting Louise to submit to a polygraph test.
Barci’s “Quarterly Homicide Synopsis Reports,” meant to provide updates on the status of the case, “document the investigation’s descent to unhinged desperation,” Sedon wrote.
The attorney wrote that in one report from September 1990 Barci explained his plan to “terrorize” Louise through “systematic harassment” and “destroy” Louise’s relationship with his family.
Barci’s goal in harassing Louise, the defense attorney added in quoting from one report, was to “push him over the edge.”
“In subsequent reports,” Sedon wrote of Barci, “he blatantly stated his goal was to drive Defendant to ‘confess or kill himself’ as result of ‘a systemic routine of police harassment.’”
With each report, Sedon’s filing stated, Barci’s investigation notes became more “hysteric.”
“In September of 1991, he described Defendant as ‘fat, slimy, double murdering ass,’” Sedon wrote, quoting from Barci’s notes. “In October, he remarked that if police harassment successfully drove Defendant to suicide, that result would be ‘certainly as equally acceptable as prosecution.’”
Sedon added that when another member of the state police uncovered a new potential suspect, Barci dismissed that person’s possible involvement. In his final report before being removed from the case, Sedon wrote, Barci called Louise “‘the virtually certain murderer’ despite lack of any new evidence.”
In 2020, the defense attorney wrote, state police submitted several items of evidence to the Vermont Forensic Lab to be retested using modern equipment and methods. Then, in October 2020, Sedon wrote, results came back for the speck of blood found on the driver’s side floormat revealing that the blood stain contained a “mixture of DNA profiles from at least two individuals.”
Sedon wrote that the lab results stated that “the major DNA profile” matched the DNA profile of George Peacock, but due to the “limited amount of genetic information available, the minor DNA profile obtained from the [floormat] is not suitable for interpretation.”
Three cigarette butts were also found at the crime scene, with two located outside and one in a kitchen trash can, Sedon wrote, and the investigation showed that neither Catherine nor George Peacock were smokers.
Two of three recovered cigarette butts had been “consumed” by previous testing and could not be retested with modern equipment and methods, Sedon wrote. The third cigarette butt, however, revealed a DNA profile which did not match the known DNA profile of Louise or the Peacocks, Sedon wrote.
“The only new evidence after 31 years of investigation is the blood speck, which is
insufficient evidence to establish the elements of second-degree murder,” Sedon wrote.
“Considered in the light most favorable to the State,” the defense attorney added, “the evidence establishes nothing more than Defendant’s mere presence in the Peacock’s home or George Peacock’s presence in Defendant’s car at some point.”
Sedon also wrote that the evidence regarding the cigarette butts shows that there was another “potential perpetrator” at the Peacocks’ home and raises “substantial doubt” whether his client or some other unknown person committed the murders.
Adam Silverman, a state police spokesperson, referred questions Thursday about the filing to Bennington County State’s Attorney Office. Jared Bianchi, the Bennington County deputy state’s attorney prosecuting the case, could not be reached Thursday for comment.
He told the Bennington Banner earlier this week that he declined comment on the Bianchi reports, but added, “We have time to respond, we do intend to do so, and we believe we will have a compelling response when we provide it to the court, and we would refer you (to) that.”
Sedon, in an interview Thursday, reiterated that there is insufficient evidence to prove his client’s guilt of second-degree murder.
“What the filing and what the records included sort of confirms is that this was one of the oldest cold cases that state police have,” Sedon said. “What the defense is going to argue is at the end of the day they didn’t have enough evidence but they wanted to close it by arrest.”
