DELAND -- Jurors heard the accused killer's own admission for the first time earlier today on a recording of a 911 call he made that he was responsible for the murder of a young New Smyrna Beach woman that turned out to be a literal bloodbath.
"I just killed someone," Russell Charles Bradshaw told 911 operator Jessica Pilney, who was dispatching calls at 9:40 p.m. on Sept. 25, 2006, for the Edgewater Police Department, when he called while standing in front of the police station. "I'm turning myself in."
The 911 operator asks: "Was this an accident?"
Bradshaw responds: "No."
Asked by the operator who the victim was, Bradshaw answers: "I'm not sure." A short time later, however, police would learn the victim, whose throat was sliced deeply from ear to ear, was someone he knew quite well: Lisa Memro, a former roommate who shared an apartment with him and her boyfriend.
Throughout the brief call, Bradshaw responds in a calm and coherent manner, even urging the operator to let officers know his family dog is also at the 914 Lake Ave. home, but assures her: "She won't bite."
In opening statements to the jury, prosecutor Matt Foxman didn't pull any punches in describing what the state contends was pre-meditated first-degree murder.
"He called Lisa Memro, she came to the house, and once there, for no apparent reason, he began to strike her," Foxman said. "After he hit Lisa Memro, he took her to the bathroom, bent her over the tub and cut her throat. Once he was finished, he dragged her to his bedroom and had sex with Lisa's dead body."
The prosecutor continued, "In the processing of 914 Lake Avenue, there is a trail of blood to the bathroom -- there is blood everywhere, on the floor, on the walls, everywhere. They (police) find a bloody knife in the kitchen sink... There is a gory -- an absurd amount of blood in that bathroom.."
Then, there's the most gruesome find of all, the prosecutor said -- Memo's crumpled body, face down on the bed, naked from the waist down and her shirt and bra pushed up from her breasts to cover the gaping hole in her throat, a wound the prosecutor said "defies description."
Gayle Graziano, former circuit judge and one of Bradshaw's attorney, readily conceded to the jury in her opening statement that the 21-year-old Bradshaw may very well have killed Memro, even asking, "Is Russell Bradshaw responsible for what happened to Miss Memro?"
Graziano then followed up: "Maybe or maybe not. But maybe isn't good enough. Not good enough for us, and it shouldn't be good enough for you."
Graziano said Bradshaw "doesn't remember any of the events" as exemplified by when he told the 911operator he didn't know who the victim was.
A series of police officers and State Attorney Investigator Shon McGuire testified otherwise, saying that Bradshaw told them he knew Memro. McGuire testified that Bradshaw told him the attack wasn't sexually motivated and that it wasn't until she was dead that he decided to go that route.
Several police officers testified about the massive amount of splattered blood, including a large amount in the bathtub where McGuire said Bradshaw told him he sliced her throat with a large serrated knife.
The jurors were shown a series of gory crime scene photos grouped together on large foam boards that co-defense attorney Rob Sanders had objected to before the jury was brought in, saying their cumulative effect was prejudicial.
Circuit Judge James R. Clayton allowed them, however, pointing out it would be no different if the jurors had a stack of individual photos and spread them out on the table when they deliberate.
More gory evidence will be introduced Friday at the Volusia County Courthouse when the medical examiner is expected to use photos to describe the array of defensive wounds the victim suffered, pre-requisite testimony required to support the state's call for a death sentence in showing how horrible a death the victim suffered.
"She was only 4 feet 11 and 109 pounds -- just 21 years old," Foxman told the somber-looking jurors as several of the victim's family members quiety wept.
