BURLINGTON – Opening testimony in a double murder trial offered details of a defendant who described himself as a “vigilante” after being arrested in a night of two murders in the Burlington area.
A prosecutor described 55-year-old Denroy Dasent as a cold-blooded killer of two men, shooting both of them at close range, one as he was lying in bed.
Dasent’s attorney countered that the evidence wasn’t clear, and there certainly wasn’t enough to convict his client of charges that could send him to prison for the rest of his life.
Those were the competing arguments jurors heard Tuesday in Chittenden County Superior criminal court in Burlington during the opening statements from lawyers on the first day of Dasent’s double-murder trial.
Neither the prosecution nor the defense talked to the jury about a motive for the killings, which took place about three hours apart in neighboring towns.
After Dasent was eventually apprehended, an investigator asked him what offenses he should face, the prosecutor said Tuesday. Dasent replied to the detective, “I should be charged with being a vigilante,” the prosecutor added.
Chittenden County Deputy State’s Attorney Kelton Olney, the prosecutor, said to the jury that on the night of Oct. 2, 2022, Dasent first fatally shot 40-year-old Sheiknoor Osman at a Pine Street apartment in Burlington as Osman was lying in bed.
Olney said an eyewitness would testify that Dasent did not say a word to Osman before shooting him at close range, or display any anger toward Osman.
Then, as police were investigating that slaying, Olney said, Dasent fired the shots that killed 37-year-old Brian K. Billings II outside a room where Billings had been living at the Swiss Host Motel on Williston Road in South Burlington.
Olney spent the next roughly 15 minutes walking the jury through testimony and evidence that he said prosecutors planned to present during the trial as they seek to prove that Dasent committed two counts of second-degree murder.
Dasent was arrested shortly after the second killing on Burlington’s waterfront, when police had tracked him down after being alerted that a gold sport-utility vehicle he was driving had also been spotted near the Pine Street homicide scene in Burlington, Olney said.
A couple days after the shooting, according to Olney, a police dive team recovered a 10 mm Glock gun from the lake near where Dasent had been arrested, and that weapon matched one that Dasent’s wife had previously purchased.
“You will hear that Mr. Dasent had access to that Glock 10 millimeter,” the prosecutor told the jurors.
Forensic analysis also showed that shell casings from both deadly shooting scenes showed they were fired from that same gun, Olney said.
Andrew Schmidt, one of Dasent’s attorneys, compared the case during his shorter opening remarks to jurors to trying to put together a used jigsaw puzzle, where some of the pieces may be missing.
Schmidt told the jury to “dig down” into the details presented during the trial. “We’re going to ask you to find that some of those pieces don’t fit,” he said.
Tricia Guyette, the first witness, testified that the shooter, who she later identified as Dasent, forced his way into the Pine Street apartment where she had been along with Osman on the night of Oct. 2, 2022.
She testified that at the time the building had been a known place for people to use and sell illegal drugs, and Dasent was someone who would go there.
Guyette told the jurors she tried to shut a door to a room on Dasent, but he got in and shot Osman repeatedly as he was laying on a bed. Dasent, she said, didn’t say anything. Instead, according to Guyette, he “emptied the clip,” firing off what she believed were five rounds from his gun she described as a Glock.
Another witness Tuesday, Kylie Clark, who lived with Billings at the Swiss Host Motel in South Burlington at the time of his fatal shooting, testified that a man, who she later identified as Dasent, knocked on the apartment door, asking to speak with Billings.
Billings then went outside the apartment. Next, Clark testified, she heard what sounded like a car backfiring or gunshots. She told jurors that she then saw Billings coming back into the apartment, bleeding, before he collapsed while Dasent walked away. Billings was later pronounced dead at the scene.
Clark testified that she and Billings had known Dasent as “Delroy.” She added that Dasent had lived at the Swiss Host Motel in the past and she knew he ran a restaurant in the food court of the University Mall in South Burlington.
Dan Maguire, a lawyer also representing Dasent, asked Clark if she had witnessed the shooting, and she said he had not.
Lt. Michael Beliveau of the Burlington Police Department also testified Tuesday. His body camera footage from that night was played for the jury, showing, at one point after he was apprehended, Dasent telling police he had “clapped” two men. Asked by the prosecutor what he believed the term meant, Beliveau testified Tuesday that it was a slang term for “killed.”
Also on the body camera footage, Dasant could be heard saying, “I will kill for my kids.”
Cpl. Cory Campbell, also of the Burlington Police Department, testified that when officers were trying to arrest Dasent, he repeatedly refused commands, and one officer had to use a Taser on him. After that proved unsuccessful, Campbell said he fired a bean bag round at Dasent, who eventually complied with police orders and was taken into custody.
Dasent, dressed in a white button down shirt and dark pants, sat throughout Tuesday’s proceedings at the defense table between his attorneys. He appeared to pay close attention to the testimony throughout the day, at times chatting with his lawyers.
Jurors are expected to return to the courthouse Wednesday to continue to hear testimony in the case that is scheduled to run through the week.
“You are the sole judge of the facts,” Judge John Pacht told the jury shortly after swearing them in Tuesday.
