SKOWHEGAN – As the state began its parade of witnesses in the Shannon Atwood murder trial Monday, three out of the four who testified had to be cautioned by the judge that they were likely going to incriminate themselves in other possible crimes.

Justice Nancy Mills was so concerned for one witness that she summoned an attorney to court to represent the woman while she testified.

Atwood, 38, is charged with the knowing and intentional murder of his girlfriend Cheryl Murdoch nearly two years ago. Murdoch, 37, is believed to have been killed sometime during the last week of July 2006. The pair were living together in Canaan in a home owned by Atwood’s estranged wife, Shirley Moon-Atwood.

Murdoch’s decomposing body was found on Aug. 11 in woods just a few miles from the Route 23 home. Moon-Atwood also was found to be missing during the subsequent investigation. Despite intensive searches in the nearly two years since, Moon-Atwood has not been found.

Atwood was originally charged with killing Moon-Atwood as well as Murdoch, but that charge was dropped in November 2007.

Atwood has waived his right to a jury, so his fate will be decided by Justice Mills. The trial being heard in Somerset County Superior Court is expected to last a full week.

In opening statements Monday, the state’s prosecutors laid out what Assistant Attorney General Andrew Benson called “simple but compelling evidence.”

Benson portrayed Murdoch as a woman down on her luck, who was unemployed, had lost her apartment in Waterville and had sent her young daughter to live with her mother in Arizona. She had plans, however, Benson maintained, to go with Atwood, who was a tractor-trailer driver, to Arizona and to bring her daughter back to Maine to begin a life as a family in Canaan. “They would all live happily ever after,” he said.

But the couple never turned up in Arizona, Benson said, and when Murdoch’s mother notified local police on July 27, a search for Murdoch began. “She had simply vanished, vanished without a trace,” Benson said.

Benson said it was Atwood himself who inadvertently led police to Murdoch’s body after an acquaintance recalled Atwood calling from the area and providing her directions to his location. When police followed the directions Atwood gave to his friend, they found Murdoch’s body a short distance away.

Benson said that shortly after Murdoch was last seen alive, Atwood was suddenly using her cell phone.

Benson also said DNA on cigarette butts and on a short piece of rope further linked Atwood to where the body was dumped along with Murdoch’s smashed cell phone in Atwood’s garbage and her license plates concealed behind a workbench. He said that when questioned by police, Atwood barricaded himself inside the Canaan home and then tried to cover his acts with a web of lies.

“All of the evidence points to Shannon Atwood,” Benson said.

But John Alsop, who along with Arnold Clark is defending Atwood, said the case all comes down to two words: reasonable doubt. He said there was no evidence linking his client to Murdoch’s murder.

“This is a case that will test the limits of reasonable doubt, will test the limits of circumstantial evidence,” he said.

Alsop said there was no question that the victim died a violent death, but that the court must keep in mind that no one knows the circumstances that led up to that murder.

“Consider the reliability of the witnesses,” he told Justice Mills.

While Mills cautioned two of the state’s witnesses about their testimony possibly incriminating them, she went so far as to summon an attorney to represent another witness, Jennifer Pratt of Waterville, while she testified.

When Alsop asked Pratt who brought the cocaine to Canaan that Murdoch used in the week before her death, Pratt’s attorney invoked the Fifth Amendment to protect his client from making statements that might lead to charges against herself.

Alsop repeatedly questioned the state’s witnesses about their drug use, whether they were employed and how they knew Murdoch.

Assistant Attorney General Melissa O’Dea, however, tried to show there was a pattern of behavior that indicated Murdoch had a viable plan to retrieve her daughter and that Atwood was part of that plan.

“This plan is very highly relevant to what happened in the last moments of her life,” O’Dea said. Witnesses to the plan included Roxanne Hoxie, who is Murdoch’s sister; Michael DeRosby of Waterville, Murdoch’s former boyfriend; and Robert Maroney, who along with Pratt went to Canaan and visited with Murdoch and Atwood during the week before her death.

During the afternoon testimony, legal discussions were frequent, both in and out of the justice’s chambers, and for long stretches Atwood relaxed at the defense table. He wore a bright blue shirt, black pants and a full beard.

During testimony, Atwood sat quietly beside his attorneys, but during the breaks he animatedly laughed and talked with corrections’ officers in view of the victim’s family members and while Murdoch’s sister, Roxanne Hoxie, waited on the witness stand for testimony to resume.

The state will continue its case today at 8:30 a.m.

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