When Third Appellate Division Court Officer Captain Michael Hart drove up the driveway of 36 Brockley Drive in Delmar on a sunny November morning in 2004, he had no idea from looking at the peaceful, pristine outside of the Porco family home, what deadly carnage lay quietly inside.
Hart told the jury which will decide if 22-year-old Christopher Porco is guilty of murdering his father and the attempted murder of his mother, that he was asked by Judge Anthony Cardona’s chief of security Frank Costello to see why law clerk and friend Peter Porco was late for work. It was 10:30 a.m. on Nov. 15, 2004 and neither Costello nor Cardona received any calls from Porco indicating he was sick or that he would be late for work.
It wasn’t like him not to call, Hart said.
When court officials tried to contact the home there was no answer. At one point, Julie Cannizzaro, a friend of the Porco family and Judge Cardona’s administrative assistant, offered to drive to the home but Costello said it would be safer if Court Officer Hart drove to 36 Brockley Drive instead.
`I arrived at 11:25 a.m. and there were no cars in the driveway,` Hart said. He then tried to contact Peter Porco two separate times on his cell phone while outside the home to see if anyone was inside. Jurors were shown a photo of the home that morning, revealing sun shining through bare November trees on a cool crisp morning in a quiet suburban neighborhood.
`No one answered the phone,` said Hart.
`Were you able to hear the phone ring?` asked Albany County Assistant District Attorney Michael McDermott.
`No, sir,` Hart answered.
`I saw a single key inside the front door lock with two or three rubber bands tied around it,` said Hart. `There was a red smear on the doorknob and two or three drops of blood on the front porch.`
Jurors were then shown the first photos of the inside of the Porco home after the attacks. They listened to Hart intently.
`I walked to the garage door and tried to pull it open,` Hart said. `The door was locked so I went back to the front porch.`
Hart then called his boss, Frank Costello, to tell him there was blood on the doorknob. Hart agreed to step inside. As Costello and Hart spoke through a speaker phone, Hart told him a dog was barking inside. It was the Porco family dog Barrister who was in the basement behind a small gated doorway.
Costello and Hart continued to speak as Hart began to open the front door.
`I opened the door about a foot then went inside the residence,` he said. Hart had his gun in one hand and his cell phone in the other talking to Costello.
`When I stepped inside, a bi-fold closet door was on the ground with big red stains on it,` Hart said.
Hart looked right and saw Peter Porco’s body lying at the base of the stairs.
`He was on his right side, shirt pulled up, eyes locked open and face covered in blood, dark blood,` Hart said. He then told Costello that the Porco home `is a crime scene, call the police.` Hart approached Peter Porco to see if there were signs of life, but he was dead. The stairs carpet was heaved up as if someone was struggling to get up. Hart then went to the kitchen and saw blood on the sliding glass door, items on the floor, a cordless phone with a red light continuously beeping and the phone charger to the side of the door.
`My boss told me to step outside and wait for police,` Hart said.
The first officer who arrived on the scene was Bethlehem police Officer Craig Sleurs.
Both officers went into the home and drew their weapons. They combed through the kitchen and the basement and saw Barrister the dog wagging his tail in a friendly manner. There was no sign of struggle downstairs.
A second Bethlehem police officer, Charles Radliff, then arrived and the three quietly went up the inside staircase, stepping over the dead body of Peter Porco at the base of the stairs.
`I noticed that all the doors to the upstairs were closed, and the only light was natural light,` Radliff told jurors.
`We searched two rooms, walked down the hallway to the last bedroom (the master bedroom), and walked straight ahead into that bedroom,` said Sleurs.
That’s when officers saw a person lying lengthwise on the bed and that person was Joan Porco. As officers entered, Joan Porco raised her hand to indicate she was alive.
`I told Det.(Chris) Bowdish there’s a second victim and she is still alive and needs EMS,` said Sleurs. `I then stepped outside and put police tape around the scene.`
Paramedics Kevin Roberts and Jim Regan arrived on scene and were swiftly sent upstairs to try and save Joan Porco’s life.
`Joan Porco was laying across the bed with very severe trauma to her face, and was moving her arms and legs a bit,` Roberts told the jury.
Paramedics tried to put an oxygen mask on her to assist her labored breathing but could only hold the mask close to her face because her wounds were so severe. They called a regional emergency doctor on call for life-threatening matters so they could give Joan Porco special medication to ease her pain and get her to the hospital. They also performed a quick assessment to see if Porco could understand what was happening.
`I asked her to keep her legs still and she did,` Roberts said. `I asked her to keep her arms straight and she did that.` They then performed a test to score Porco’s eye, verbal, and motor abilities. Though she could barely see out of only one working eye that was covered in blood after the attack, Roberts indicated that she could see and her motor response was good. She could not, however, speak.
Defense Attorney Laurie Shanks questioned Roberts’ assessment of Joan Porco because of her poor physical condition at the time due to her injuries from the attack.
`You are not a doctor,` said Shanks
`No,` said Roberts.
`You’re not a neurologist,` said Shanks.
`No,` Roberts again replied.
`The bleeding on her eye, face and jaw were not controlled,` said Shanks.
`No,` Roberts said.
`She had such severe pain and low blood levels that she could have been disoriented,` Shanks stated.
`That’s correct,` said Roberts.
Shanks went on to say that Joan Porco’s left eye was not visible and her right eye was not responding.
Shortly after the assessment at the scene from paramedics, Bethlehem Police Det. Chris Bowdish entered and there seems to be confusion about whether Roberts and Bowdish asked Joan Porco who committed the crime, or whether only Bowdish asked questions. EMS unit commander Dennis Wood testified that he was present when Bowdish began questioning Porco.
`He asked who did this to her and if one of her sons had done this,` said Wood. `She nodded yes and shook her head yes.`
When asked if Christopher Porco committed the crime, Wood said `she shook her head yes.`
Whether or not Joan Porco was coherent when paramedics and officers arrived at Brockley Drive is a key component to the prosecution’s case. It is their contention that Joan Porco nodded in the affirmative when she was asked if her son Christopher committed the crime. Christopher Porco could face life in prison if he is convicted on both counts.
The trial will resume again on July 5
