Bridges murder trial goes to jury Last arguments focus on change in stories

MACHIAS – A Washington County jury begins deliberations this morning in the murder trial of a 20-year-old Jonesboro woman who is accused of shooting her live-in boyfriend and leaving him to die.

During closing arguments on Monday, defense attorneys for Katrina Bridges outlined two alternative scenarios for the Jan. 4 death of 23-year-old Christopher Ingraham Jr.

Ingraham, the father of Bridges’ 4-month-old son, died of a gunshot wound to the head at Eastern Maine Medical Center a little more than 12 hours after police found him unconscious in the bedroom of the couple’s Look’s Point Road home.

Officers went to the Jonesboro home in response to Bridges’ initial report on Jan. 3 that two armed Canadian men had forced their way into the couple’s home the previous evening.

Bridges told the state police that one of the men shot Ingraham and the other abducted her and the baby, driving them around for hours before pushing them out of the vehicle a few miles from her mother’s home in Whitneyville.

She changed her story several times under police questioning, and she eventually said she’d shot Ingraham at his request and was supposed to kill herself but was unable to do so. Bridges said she was so distraught that she drove around for hours before going to her mother’s Whitneyville home and asking for help.

On Monday, Bridges’ defense attorneys – David Mitchell and Jeffrey Toothaker – called several witnesses who testified that there was a known Canadian drug dealer in the Machias area around the time that Ingraham was shot.

Mitchell and Toothaker also submitted a written statement from a St. John, New Brunswick, police officer who said officers searched the St. John home of Wayne Jones on Jan. 10 and confiscated hashish, marijuana, cash and 140 8-milligram Dilaudids – a prescription pain reliever.

A former desk clerk at the Machias Motor Inn testified that Jones was registered at the motel on Dec. 26 and 27, 2000. Another witness said Jones had come to her home on Dec. 27 to see someone who was staying with her and he’d been driving a gray Jeep.

Bridges told state police that the Canadians who came to the couple’s home were in a gray Jeep.

“The Canadians exist and they are scary,” Toothaker told the jury during closing arguments. “They are a part of this case and drugs are a part of this case.”

Toothaker charged that the state police had never followed up on Bridges’ report of Canadians and that they’d never investigated any leads that would have weakened their case. Bridges was indicted within 15 days after Ingraham died, he said.

Toothaker acknowledged that Bridges told police many versions of what happened the night Ingraham was shot. But, he said, the state police chose the version that was most helpful to their desire to charge her with murder.

Toothaker said the version that state police accepted was the murder-suicide version in which Bridges maintained that she’d helped Ingraham kill himself at his request – placing her hand over his on the gun and pulling the trigger.

But if that version is the one that state police are going with, the charge should be manslaughter, not murder, he said.

Toothaker took the jury through a transcript of Bridges’ 61/2-hour interview with state police detectives and he reminded them of Monday morning’s testimony by state police Detective David Preble.

Preble said he’d gone to Eastern Maine Medical Center the night before Ingraham died to take a picture of his wound and noticed black marks around the wound. Preble said he thought the black marks were powder burns – indicating that Ingraham had been shot at close range.

Toothaker said Preble’s testimony supported Bridges’ contention that she’d helped Ingraham pull the trigger on the .22-caliber rifle that was the murder weapon. That scenario also explains why her fingerprint was on the trigger, he said.

Toothaker said testimony by Ingraham’s co-workers at the commissary at the Cutler navy base indicated that he was depressed. He was upset about his and Bridges’ relationship – because of Bridges’ thefts, and his questions of whether he was the father of the baby, Toothaker said.

“They are making out a case for manslaughter,” Toothaker said, pointing out various passages in the transcript of Bridges’ interview with police. “The state’s own proof says manslaughter or less.”

But Benson told the jury that Toothaker’s argument supporting assisted suicide was “an eleventh-hour” change in defense strategy and “an act of sublime desperation.”

“We’ll blame it on the Canadians despite the fact that there’s no evidence they were involved,” Benson said, characterizing the defense. “Oh well, it must be murder-suicide.”

The state does not believe the murder-suicide story, Benson said. That was just one of the stories that Bridges told police detectives, he said.

“She tells story after story after story after story because she is conscious of guilt, ” Benson said.

And despite Toothaker’s contentions, Bridges had a motive to kill Ingraham, he said. There was a $45,000 insurance policy on his life and the couple wasn’t getting along, he said.

“This isn’t rocket science,” he said. “You have to use common sense.”

Justice Ellen Gorman will charge the jury at 8:30 a.m. today and they will begin deliberating the case immediately after the charge.