On Tuesday, Aug. 1, jurors in the Christopher Porco murder trial heard Joan Porco for a second day. She testified that she was incredulous after hearing her son was the main suspect in the ax attack that killed her husband Peter and left her blind in one eye.
`There was not the relationship with the police that I expected,` said Joan Porco.
Although prosecutors maintain Joan Porco named her suspect when she nodded `yes` to the question `Did Chris do this to you?` she maintains the real killer is still somewhere at large.
`I believe this person or these people are still out there,` Porco said. `Are they after me now? It’s scary for me.`
Tuesday’s questioning of Porco by Chief Prosecutor Michael McDermott took a more serious tone, leaving the defendant’s mother often confused and unable to answer specific questions.
When McDermott asked if Joan Porco remembered telling police after the crime that she and her husband had no enemies, Porco testified, `I don’t recall saying that.`
`Do you know it was your son Christopher who broke into your home (in November of 2002) and stole your laptop computer?` asked McDermott.
`He didn’t break in,` said Porco. `He was living with me during Thanksgiving.`
Prosecutors believe Christopher Porco broke into his family’s Brockley Drive, Delmar, home more than once and stole several electronic items only to sell them on eBay. McDermott asked Joan Porco if she knew her son Christopher had started his own business while at the University of Rochester.
`What was the name of the company?` asked McDermott.
`I wish I could remember(pause) Computers Direct or something like that,` said Porco.
`Does Computers Direct 2000 sound accurate?` asked McDermott. `Did you know how long your son was engaged in that business?`
`I don’t know,` answered Joan Porco. `About a year or so.`
`Did he say he would pay his tuition from profits he made from this business?` asked McDermott.
`We knew there was a tuition waiver from what he told us,` Porco answered.
Witnesses from the University of Rochester financial affairs office testified that Christopher Porco never had a tuition waiver, and instead owed $17,000 for the 2004 fall semester.
McDermott said in an interview outside the courtroom that Christopher Porco in fact made $30,000 in income one year from his home-based computer business, and had filed for a DBA or a business name for Doing Business As Computers Direct 2000. McDermott wouldn’t say how Christopher Porco obtained the merchandise that he sold.
`We are precluded from offering any proof along those lines during this trial,` McDermott said.
McDermott also quizzed Joan Porco about knowledge of her son’s academic deficiencies. When Christopher Porco was academically separated from the University of Rochester, his mother testified it was because Chris told her he had mononucleosis.
`It was horrible, he should not have stayed,` said Joan Porco.
`Do you recall the dean telling Chris to take a medical exam,` asked McDermott.
`No,` answered Joan Porco.
`Do you recall the universities health office say to you he had mono,` McDermott continued, `and were you presented with those records?`
`No, never,` answered Joan Porco.
McDermott reminded Joan Porco that from the time Christopher Porco was academically separated from one college and flunking out in a second school he took two trips, one to Acapulco and the other to Europe.
`How did Christopher pay for his trip to Acapulco?` McDermott asked.
`Perhaps they did some fundraising,` answered Joan Porco. `I don’t know.`
McDermott asked Joan Porco how her son paid for his European trip.
`Christopher paid for the tickets, and he was having difficulty at the time with PayPal and eBay and his cash was not accessible,` said Joan Porco.
`So I loaned him spending money for the trip.`
Defense Attorneys Terence Kindlon and Laurie Shanks strongly objected to the prosecution’s line of questioning about statements Joan Porco made to friends and relatives the week of the crime.
`Do you recall telling your brother that Christopher was so out of control that you had given him up to God?` asked McDermott.
`No, I don’t recall,` said Porco.
`Do you remember on a conference trip to Boston, telling Mrs. (Mary Ann) Effner you needed to get a psychologist for Chris?` McDermott asked.
`No, I did not,` Joan Porco answered.
Defense attorneys tried to get the statement stricken from the record later in the day, but Judge Jeffrey Berry allowed it to remain. Shanks and Kindlon finished their cross-examination of Joan Porco by asking if her husband had ever received death threats as a law clerk.
`The father of one child threatened Peter’s life when he lost custody of his children,` said Joan Porco. She told jurors that her husband thought about buying a handgun, but was talked out of it by his boss, Third Appellate District Judge Anthony Cardona. McDermott reminded Joan Porco that the death threat was 15 years ago. Joan Porco herself testified that the man who made the threats served time on another matter.
Kindlon said after, that Joan Porco is a strong, courageous `woman who has risen from the ashes.`
The prosecution’s case in the murder trial of Christopher Porco is expected to conclude Wednesday, Aug. 2 with former Brockley Drive resident Marshall Gokey taking the stand. Gokey is expected to testify that in the early morning hours of Nov. 15, 2004, he spotted a yellow Jeep Wrangler belonging to Christopher Porco in the driveway outside the home close to the time Peter and Joan Porco were attacked.
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