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The Spader murder trial has started~ horror in a little NH town
#1
Comment: They can stand in line behind Addison I could build a "death chamber" if they need one.

Spader trial: Mom fought to save daughter
By KATHRYN MARCHOCKI
New Hampshire Union Leader Staff
1 hour, 51 minutes ago

NASHUA – Editor's Note: This story has graphic content.

Local nurse Kimberly L. Cates fought hard to save her life and shield her 11-year-old daughter from the relentless machete and knife blows Steven Spader and an accomplice inflicted after breaking into a Mont Vernon home last fall, the state alleged Tuesday.

But she was no match for the ferocity of Spader's machete and Christopher A. Gribble's knife as they hacked and cut through flesh and bone, dying in bed within arm's reach of her only child, Jaimie, Assistant Attorney General Peter A. Hinckley said.

"Kim and Jaimie's screams didn't stop him. Their cries, their begging, their pleas didn't stop him because he was merciless and he and Gribble were focused on what they intended and planned all along -- to break in and kill whoever was inside for fun, for kicks, ultimately for a few pieces of jewelry," Hinckley said.

At least one of the 16 jurors at Spader's trial in Hillsborough County Superior Court wiped away tears as Hinckley described in gruesome detail the massive and multiple wounds the mother and daughter suffered.

Spader, 18, is charged with first-degree murder for allegedly murdering Kimberly Cates, the attempted murder of her daughter, murder and burglary conspiracy and witness-tampering in the Oct.4, 2009, attack.


Assistant Attorney General Peter Hinckley displays a photograph of the Cates family while reaching for a machette allegedly used to kill Kimberly Cates during the first day of Steven Spader's trial Hillsborough Superior Court on Tuesday (BOB HAMMERSTROM/AP POOL)
Gribble, 21, also of Brookline faces the same charges. He is set to stand trial Feb. 22 and may rely on an insanity defense.

Dressed in a dark navy blazer and blue dress shirt, Spader sat motionless and stared ahead as the prosecutor portrayed him as a cold-blooded, calculating and remorseless killer.

"Who would hack apart a helpless, defenseless mother and daughter in their bed and then laugh and boast about it?" Hinckley asked.

Presuming both Cates and her daughter were dead, Spader, Gribble and their cohorts, Quinn Glover, 18, and William Marks, 19, both of Amherst, went through the house stealing jewelry and other items, then fled, he alleged.

All four intruders wore gloves and left no fingerprints, cleaned the murder weapons, and they changed out of their bloody clothes and shoes and tossed them in a river where DNA and blood evidence was washed away, Hinckley said.

"But in the end, they could not stop talking and bragging about what they did," Hinckley said.

Several friends and acquaintances to whom Spader and Gribble gave gloating and graphic accounts of the crime went to police and have agreed to testify, he said.

The state also will introduce a letter Spader wrote from jail in which he proudly described the crime in detailed terms and a poem Spader wrote.

Steven Spader's poem
Another toe is gone
How did we go wrong
We had a perfect plan
Machetes in our hand
We went up in the house
And turned the power off
Quiet as a mouse
We went up in the house
We went up in the room
'Mommy, is it you?'
Your mommy isn't here
I slit her throat from ear to ear
Now we're all in jail
Now we all have no bail
Friends turning over friends
And this is how the story ends.

"We had a perfect plan / Machetes in our hand," Hinckley said as he read out loud a portion of the poem.

Co-defendants Marks, Glover and Hollis resident Autumn Savoy, 21, who helped cover up the crime, also will testify against Spader as part of cooperation agreements with the state.

Glover and Savoy already pleaded guilty to their crimes.

Spader's court-appointed defense attorney Andrew Winters stressed there is no forensic or physical evidence that links Spader to the Cates' home or the weapons.

And he said three co-defendants who will be the state's key witnesses have told multiple and contradictory stories. He accused them of cutting deals to shave time off their prison sentences "in exchange for shifting the blame off of themselves and onto Steven Spader."

Marks, he said, boasted about "stabbing somebody" with a knife and held an ax near Trow Road and said "he wanted to plant it in somebody's head," Winters said.

Glover's "weapon of choice" was an ax; he posted a photo of himself with one on his MySpace page, Winters said. Police also found a samurai sword hidden under his mattress, Winters said.

The state said all four men were inside the home, but only Gribble and Spader participated in the attack.

Winters dismissed the state's claim that the Disciples of Destruction "brotherhood" Spader formed shortly before the murder to carry out illegal activities was a legitimate gang.

"No one who was supposedly in this gang took it seriously. And, in general, no one took Steve Spader seriously. Anyone who knew Steve Spader said he constantly bragged, exaggerated and said things that weren't true or were doubtful to make himself look tough," Winters told jurors.

The state depicted Spader as a brutal, media-hungry killer eager to hear news accounts of the home invasion and murder. When they learned Jaimie survived, Spader "teased Gribble for not being able to finish her off" and "bragged about how he had gotten his bitch," Hinckley said.

Spader and Gribble allegedly got on either side of the bed in the darkened room and began hacking and cutting at Cates and her daughter, Hinckley said.

Jaimie Cates, in an effort to escape, jumped off the bed and into Gribble's arms where he continued to stab her with his knife and threw her against a sliding glass door, he said.

"Spader went up to the crumpled little girl on the floor. He took his machete and he hacked at her one last time, splitting open her head," Hinckley said.

Jaimie suffered an estimated 15 wounds, including a partially amputated left foot and an amputated toe and a deep facial wound that severed a nerve and cracked through her jaw bone.

Kimberly Cates, he said, was "strong" and fought Spader and Gribble hard until Gribble slit her throat, he said.

Kimberly Cates suffered more than 30 wounds, Hinckley said.

She had been stabbed about a dozen times and had a number of hacking wounds, including one that broke apart her upper arm bone and two that "broke open her skull and sunk into her brain," he said.

"She made a mother's sacrifice for her daughter," Hinckley said as David Cates, who was Kimberly's husband and is Jaimie's father, sat in the front row of the court room with members of his family. Cates was away on business when the attack occurred and the mother and daughter were sleeping in the same room.

The jury heard a recording of the 911 call Jaimie made about 4 a.m.

The girl's barely audible voice tried to tell the dispatcher "they" robbed her house.

Milford Police Sgt. Kevin Furlong forced open the front door and went to the severely wounded child lying on the kitchen floor.

"She was attempting to scream and yell, but no sound came out. She said in a whisper while shaking that 'I think my mommy is dead'," Furlong testified.

"I told her nobody else was going to hurt her," Furlong said, then carried the bleeding girl outside.

Dr. Amir Taghinia, a plastic surgeon who was part of the surgical trauma team who treated Jaimie Cates at Children's Hospital in Boston, said at least four of her wounds were caused by a heavy, sharp weapon, such as a machete or sword, wielded with force comparable to someone grabbing it "like a baseball bat and putting it over their head."

Trial resumes today for the second day of testimony.

He ain't heavy, he's my brother.
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#2
thanks Maggot, i was hoping you'd be tracking the trial.
the fuckers not only killed this woman for sport, they chopped off the toes of her young daughter, who survived. it's as sickening as the Petit case in Conn.
horror in a picture-postcard New Hampshire town.

photos below, the victims and spader.


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#3
Clockwise from top left: Steven Spader, Christopher Gribble, William Marks, and Quinn Glover.

Assistant Attorney General Peter Hinckley shows the machette allegedly used in the murder of Kimberly Cates and attack on her daughter, during the first day of Steven Spader's trial in Hillsborough Superior Court Tuesday, October 26, 2010, in Nashua, N.H.


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#4
The Father and Daughter still live in the same house. I could not stay there if it was me.
He ain't heavy, he's my brother.
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#5
the jurors (and defendant) were taken to see the house/crime scene.

photo is a memorial at the end of Trow road.

Mont Vernon could be the set for "Peyton Place", a beautiful place.
state Rep. Linda Foster said murder "ripped at the heart and soul of a sweet little New England town."


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#6
NH hasn't executed anyone since 1939. it's time. 90

Capital punishment in New Hampshire is a legal form of punishment for the crime of capital murder. Capital murder is the only crime for which the death penalty can be imposed in the state. Since 1734, twenty-four people have been executed, with the last execution carried out in 1939. As of 2008, there is one person on "Death Row;" however, there is currently no death chamber.

Hanging is the method of execution historically used in the state. Lethal injection is currently the primary legal form of execution, though hanging can be utilized if lethal injection is determined to be "impractical to carry out the punishment of death."

















































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#7
AP
NASHUA, N.H. — A man whose wife was hacked to death and whose daughter was maimed during a home invasion glared from the witness stand today at the man prosecutors say struck his loved ones repeatedly with a machete.

During much of his half-hour of testimony, David Cates turned toward the jury and avoided eye contact with defendant Steven Spader. He identified articles that were stolen from his home the night his wife was killed in a brutal machete-and-knife attack and their 11-year-old daughter was left for dead.

Asked by Senior Assistant Attorney General Jeffery Strelzin if he gave Spader or anyone else permission to be in his home on Oct. 4, 2009, Cates faced Spader and said in a booming voice, "I did not." Strelzin then asked Cates if he gave Spader or anyone else permission to take items from his home. Cates glared at Spader and said firmly, "I did not."

Spader is charged with killing Kimberly Cates and attempting to kill the Cates’ daughter, Jaimie, in their Mont Vernon home. He has pleaded not guilty to murder and other charges. The murder charge carries the penalty of life in prison without possibility of parole.

Defense attorneys say the state has no forensic evidence linking Spader to the crime and that the key witnesses against him — three co-defendants — cut deals to lessen their own sentences. A fourth co-defendant is scheduled to stand trial in February.

David Cates, an engineer with BAE Systems, testified that he was in Maryland on business when the attacks occurred.

Cates said he used to go out of town for work about 26 times a year before the home invasion. Now he does not travel. Strelzin asked him why that was.

"Because Jaimie needs me there and I needed to be there with Jaimie," Cates said.

Cates said he rushed home after a trooper called him to tell him about the attacks. Jaimie, the Cates’ only child, told police she survived by feigning death.

Jurors saw photographs of a trail of blood leading from the master bedroom, where the attacks occurred, to the kitchen where Jaimie was found, covered in blood beside a telephone handset. Her sobbing 911 call was played for jurors on Tuesday.

A doctor testified Wednesday that Jaimie would have died of a punctured lung if she had lost consciousness before calling police.

Dr. David Mooney, a pediatric surgeon, said never in his 23 years of practice had he treated a child with as many stab and slash wounds as were inflicted on Jaimie.

Assailants cut off a portion of her left foot, punctured her lung, struck her in the face with enough force to break her jaw and split her head open, cracking her skull.


family photo and the husband and father:


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#8
Dr. Amir Taghinia, a surgeon at Children's Hospital Boston, describes Jaimie Cates' wounds and the work he and other doctors performed to treat her after the attack on her and her mother in October 2009. The evidence photograph shows a piece cut from Jaimie's foot.

click to enlarge. photo is graphic.


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#9
AP

NASHUA, N.H. -- A teenager who was in a New Hampshire home where two people were attacked with a machete says the man on trial in the case was obsessed with sensationally killing people in the weeks before the attacks.

Eighteen-year-old Quinn Glover testified Thursday that Steven Spader wanted to break into homes, kill the occupants, stay overnight, roast and eat the victims and stage their bodies for the media.




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#10
AP
NASHUA, N.H. — A teenager who helped hide evidence in a deadly New Hampshire home invasion and machete attack says he also provided an alibi for the first person to go on trial for murder in the case.

Twenty-year-old Autumn Savoy testified Friday against 18-year-old Steven Spader. Prosecutors say Spader killed Kimberly Cates and maimed her 11-year-old daughter in their home.

Savoy has pleaded guilty to hindering prosecution and conspiracy and will be sentenced to five to 19 years in prison.

Savoy had told police Spader was at his house the night of the attacks. He has said Spader told him hours after the home invasion that he had killed two people.

Savoy has said Spader told him the burglary was an initiation rite for his brotherhood, the Disciples of Destruction.


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#11
Nov. 3 Nashua Telegraph:

NASHUA – Steven Spader was a dim figure standing on the right side of Kimberly Cates’ bed. It was a full moon that night, and it sounded like a bat hitting the mattress when he used two hands to bring a machete down on the figures in the bed.

They begged. Someone said it was going to be OK. It wasn’t, according to William Marks, who was on the witness stand Tuesday in Spader’s first-degree murder trial.

Marks, 19, of Amherst, is the only person scheduled to testify who says he saw what happened inside the bedroom Oct. 4, 2009, when Cates was hacked to death and her daughter, Jaimie Cates, left for dead.

Marks said he turned on the lights once the attack was over and saw Kimberly Cates on the bed. She was moaning. A little girl was on the floor against a sliding glass door. She wasn’t moving.

“Steve Spader walked up to her and hit her in the head with a machete and kicked her in the chest,” Marks said. Jaimie Cates, who was 11 at the time, didn’t move. FILTHY BEAST

Jaimie was eventually able to crawl out of the bedroom, find a phone in the kitchen and call 911.

GREAT FATHER Afterward, Marks said he and his father, James Marks, talked about the value of his knowledge, and they schemed to sell the story to a national media outlet during jailhouse visits and on the phone. A national outlet would pay more for the information, Marks said under cross-examination by defense lawyer Jonathan Cohen.

He also admitted to a laundry list of lies he told police when he was first interviewed, the day after the murder was discovered.

Marks took the stand during the seventh day of testimony. Spader is charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder, witness tampering, and conspiracy to murder and burglary. He faces life in prison without the chance of parole.

Marks spoke quietly but clearly during his 2½ hours of testimony. The bright, jailhouse orange shirt looked too big on his 5-foot 3-inch, 97-pound frame.

Marks was a senior at Souhegan High School in Amherst last fall. He met Spader at a party about six months before. They hung out together a lot and sometimes talked about killing and hurting people, he said.

Marks said he had friends who lived near Trow Road and he knew the area.

A week or two before the attack, he and Spader were driving past the Cates home and the large house next door and talked about robbing them because they were isolated, he said.

Later, Christopher Gribble joined in on the plan, Marks said, and he learned Quinn Glover would be there the night of the attack, he said.

Throughout much of Saturday, Spader sent Marks increasingly demanding text messages, which were shown in court Tuesday, demanding he come and meet him. At one point, Marks text-messaged Spader that they should wait to rob the house until the family left for church, according to the texts.

Senior Assistant Attorney General Jeff Strelzin had Marks read one of the rules of the “Disciples of Destruction,” or D.O.D., which was a gang or brotherhood Spader formed around the time of the attack, according to prosecutors.

“If you get called, you come. No questions asked,” Marks read.

Eventually Marks said he told his girlfriend, Tenley Carmen, he was going home but met up with Spader and Gribble. They changed clothes, picked up Glover and drove to Mont Vernon, he said.

Gribble lowered Marks into the basement, because he was the smallest, but Marks thought he was locked in because he was trying to push open a door that opened toward him. Once inside, the men checked a number of rooms, turned off the electricity, and Spader and Gribble went into the master bedroom armed with a machete, knife and an iPod for light, Marks said.

“Spader shined the iPod on the people in the bed. They woke up. They started to talk, and at that point, Steve Spader started hitting them with a machete,” Marks said. “They were saying, ‘You don’t have to do this. Please stop. Everything is going to be OK.’”

Marks said he was in the doorway during the attack and was focused on Spader. He said he didn’t see what Gribble was doing.

Marks said he joked with the others after the attack. He testified that before the attack, he said he wanted to “plant” a hatchet he had in Gribble’s car into someone’s head. Earlier, he told Carmen he wanted to “kill a pig” with a knife he had just purchased at a Milford shop.

Marks said he was just going along with the crowd and trying to look tough in front of his girlfriend. The day after the attack, Marks told Carmen he was having flashbacks about what happened.

Strelzin repeatedly had Marks look at the jury and tell them exactly what he had and had not done in connection with the attack. Marks admitted he helped plan it, picking the house and even giving Gribble directions to it, but said he never touched Kimberly or Jaimie Cates and never took anything from the house.


marks--->


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#12
Thanks L.C. for keeping up on this. I once left my doors un-locked sometimes and did not show my wife where I keep my gun. This trial has taught me to include her in my home security plans. It might scare her to think about it but we had a talk, and she now knows that it might become a life or death decision, she will come with me during target practice now. It really kinda sucks that we in todays society must sometimes remember that we are never really "safe".

Where the FUCK in ninja bitch?..........Anyways. Russian
He ain't heavy, he's my brother.
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#13
(11-03-2010, 07:43 PM)Maggot Wrote: she will come with me during target practice now. It really kinda sucks that we in todays society must sometimes remember that we are never really "safe".


Yes, it does suck. I don't like guns, I don't like having them in my home and every few weeks he insists I go down by the woods with him & shoot them. He's not amused when I say I'd rather turn my viper like tongue on the bad person, consequently, I now know how to blow someones brains out.


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#14
i feel sorry for this father. i can't imagine how it feels to know your child could be a party to such depravity.

NASHUA – Christopher Gribble’s father, Richard Gribble, just finished testifying about the events before and after Kimberly Cates was murdered Oct. 4, 2009.

Richard Gribble identified the machete and the knife prosecutors say were used by his son and by Steven Spader during the attack as the blades he kept in his Brookline home.

Gribble said he looked for the machete he kept in his garage and a knife he kept in the basement after hearing about his son’s arrest and couldn’t find either.

He said he bought the knife, a Boy Scout knife, at a Boy Scout camp in California when he was a teenager.

Judge Gillian Abramson just recessed the trial for lunch. She told jurors the case is moving quickly and that the prosecution has two more witnesses to go.


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#15


I heard someone say once, when children are small, they step all over your feet, when they are bigger, they step all over your heart.
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#16
closing arguments monday. goes to the jury soon.

The Associated Press
Thursday, November 4, 2010; 4:09 PM

NASHUA, N.H. -- A medical examiner says a New Hampshire woman who was killed by intruders in a machete-and-knife attack was alive when all 32 slash and stab wounds were inflicted.

Dr. Jennie Duval testified Thursday in Steven Spader's trial that 42-year-old Kimberly Cates died from loss of blood.

Prosecutors say Spader wielded the machete during the home invasion, killing Cates and maiming her 11-year-old daughter. He has pleaded not guilty to murder and other charges.

Duval says blows from a machete and knife pierced Cates' heart, fractured her skull and slashed her brain.

A prosecutor stared at Spader as he asked Duval if Cates was alive for every single wound. She said she was.

Both the state and the defense rested their cases Thursday. The defense called no witnesses. The judge denied its motion for acquittal.

















































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#17
I believe the prosecution rests and the rabid court appointed defense has its chance now. If I am not mistaken.
He ain't heavy, he's my brother.
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#18
both sides have rested, closings monday.
the defense didn't put the usual witnesses on to say spader had bad potty training.
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#19
I am not sure if the Daughter testified.
He ain't heavy, he's my brother.
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#20
no, they didn't put her through that. just the husband and father took the stand.

















































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