In action at the Officer Dan Talbot murder trial last Friday, fringe witnesses to various parts of the crime took the stand with some interesting developments.
Perhaps the strongest witness in some time for the prosecution was 17-year-old Marilyn Cardona – who was only a young teen when the crime unfolded.
Cardona testified of her free will, with no cooperating agreement, and told the jury that she had been in a relationship with Michael Picardi at the time of the murder, and that she had witnessed Picardi dismantle a handgun and dispose of it in storm drains on Cushman Avenue.
Picardi has been a fringe character in the investigation for quite sometime. Some have said he has a cooperating agreement with the government, but that might have been yanked in recent months. Then again, maybe he never had one.
Picardi has never been charged in the case, but prosecutors have continuously said they believe that he was asked to dispose of the murder weapon and hide drugs and a rifle. He also is believed to have burned a hoodie (a hooded sweatshirt) behind his Adams Court home. Supposedly Jimmy Heang handed off all of those things to him in order to destroy evidence.
Though he was not a member of the B-Way group that is alleged to have committed the crime, many members of that group testified that they often asked him to do “certain things.â€
Cardona told the jury that she had been at a football game with Picardi on Sept. 28, and then spent the night at his home.
Later on Saturday, she returned and found Gia Nagy at the home. Nagy was Iacoviello’s girlfriend, and she was originally charged in the matter, but has recently taken a plea deal for 1-2 years in prison.
Cardona said that as they sat in Picardi’s bedroom, he received a phone call. He immediately left, she said, and came back with a duffle bag that contained bullets, pieces of a handgun, a rifle and bags of marijuana.
She testified that he and Nagy began cleaning the gun pieces with Clorox and scratching off the serial numbers.
Then – in what has become controversial – she testified that they placed the pieces in blue plastic gloves.
“Michael Picardi grabbed blue plastic gloves and put the broken pieces in them in front of me,†she said. “He put them in the gloves until nothing was left and then they planned to throw them away.â€
Cardona testified that the three of them walked to Cushman Avenue, where Nagy and Picardi allegedly tossed the gloves into storm drains along the street.
During the investigation, police found several gun pieces in blue plastic gloves down in the drains along Cushman Avenue.
It was sound testimony, until defense attorney Peter Krupp poked a few holes in her story.
Krupp reminded her that in December 2007, she told a Grand Jury that Picardi and Nagy put the gun pieces in white cloth, never once mentioning anything about blue plastic gloves.
Krupp: You never told the Grand Jury that. You told them white cloth?
Cardona: Yes.
Krupp: The prosecutor told you they found the gun pieces in blue plastic gloves?
Cardona: Yes.
