BATH – The prosecution in the Norma Small murder trial produced a procession of witnesses on Tuesday that connected Small to Joel Fuller and underscored her intense dislike for her slain husband.

The state contends that Small, 63, of Gas, Kan., hired Fuller to murder her husband, U.S. Navy Petty Officer Mervin “Sonny” Grotton. Prosecutor Andrew Benson argued that Small wanted Grotton out of the way in order to collect his life insurance and survivor benefits as a military widow.

The 46-year old Grotton was gunned down in his Belfast dooryard seconds after arriving home from his duty station in Newport, R.I. The murder took place on Dec. 16, 1983. The case went unsolved for 18 years until Small, Fuller and Boyd Smith, 44, of Brooks were indicted on the murder-for-hire conspiracy in 2001.

Smith was acquitted on the charge when his case came to trial in February. He admitted during the trial that he told Fuller that Small was willing to pay to have her husband killed and gave him her phone number and address. Smith is scheduled to testify against Small today.

The Small trial was moved to Sagadahoc County Superior Court because of Fuller’s notoriety and the extensive publicity surrounding the case in Waldo County. After the Grotton murder, Fuller was involved in two drug-related homicides and is now serving multiple life sentences out of state. He is expected to be tried on the Grotton case later this year.

At Tuesday’s session, Karen Reed of Lincolnville testified that she saw Fuller at Small’s home on more than one occasion in the weeks leading up to Grotton’s murder. Small has denied knowing Fuller.

Reed testified that Fuller was her cousin and she was sure he was the man she saw “partying” at Small’s during the summer and fall of 1983.

Another friend of Small’s, Reed’s sister Vicki Harriman, of Liberty, also testified that Small knew Fuller.

Harriman testified that Small had told her more than once that she was fed up with her husband and that Grotton was “worth more to her dead than alive.”

Harriman testified that she was at the Grotton home the Sunday before the murder and observed him kiss his wife goodbye before leaving for Rhode Island. Harriman said Small reacted by shuddering and saying to her, “That’s the last time he’ll ever touch me or ever kiss me.”

Another damaging witness was Larry D. Phillips, 44, of Waterville. A drug informant now awaiting trial on a weapons charge, Phillips described himself as a lifelong friend of Fuller’s. He recalled a night a year after the murder when he and Fuller were “driving around drinking” in Searsmont when Fuller indicated that he had dumped a .30-30 rifle in a nearby stream. Grotton was killed by a weapon of the same caliber.

Phillips said Fuller told him he had used the rifle to kill a man in Belfast. He said Fuller told him he waited for the man to return home from the service and shot him in the back. He then finished him off at close range, Phillips said Fuller told him.

Benson emphasized that Fuller’s knowledge of the placement of the shots that killed Grotton were kept secret by the police and never reported by the media.

Throughout the day, defense attorney Peter Mason of Searsport repeatedly objected to the hearsay nature of some of the testimony and the accuracy of the memories of witnesses recalling activities that happened nearly 20 year ago.

Mason spent much of the session arguing his point at sidebar conferences with Benson and Justice Nancy Mills held out of earshot of the jury.

Mason also questioned the interpretation made by police of certain statements made by Small during interviews.

During a June 2000 interview at the Waldo County sheriff’s office, state police Detective Dean Jackson and U.S. Navy investigator Norman D. Kelly told Small that they were convinced that Fuller killed her husband and that she hired him to do it.

When she replied that she did not care if the case went unsolved until the day she died and that she had made peace with her Maker, the officers testified that they took that as a sign of guilt.

Couldn’t she have meant that she was prepared to wait the rest of her life for the murder to be solved? he asked. Couldn’t her being at peace with herself mean that she was without guilt?

Jackson replied that he didn’t think so.