In March 2009, as Luis Starlyn Hernandez Rodriguez told investigators that he had little to do with the murder of a Covington-area paramedic, his best friend and roommate being questioned down the hall said Rodriguez had told him a very different story.
Ellis Lucia, The Times-Picayune
St. Tammany Parish Justice Center, Covington
Melvin Gonzalez was ushered into a St. Tammany Parish courtroom Thursday. He was described by prosecutors as a "hostile witness." in the first-degree murder trial against Rodriguez, who Gonzalez considers "a brother."
Rodriguez is the first of four defendants to stand trial for a 2009 murder-for-hire plot, in which Gina Scramuzza allegedly paid three men to burglarize her house and kill 48-year-old Mario "Chip" Scramuzza Jr., her husband and the father of her teenage son.
On Feb. 27, 2009, Scramuzza was tied up and beaten, his nose and two ribs broken, St. Tammany Parish Chief Deputy Coroner Dr. Michael Defatta testified Thursday. He was killed by strangulation, likely a ligature, and blunt force trauma.
When Rodriguez was arrested at his Metairie home a few days later, Gonzalez was picked up too and charged with possession of 14 grams of cocaine deputies found on his couch.
Rodriguez told investigators in a taped statement that another man, Carlos Rodriguez, had led him to believe they were to burglarize the house, take what they wanted, then leave. Carlos Rodriguez, he said, single-handedly tied up and beat the man. He and the other man involved, Erly Yamil Montoya-Matute, didn't even know Scramuzza was dead until they heard about it on the news.
But Gonzalez, afraid of the cocaine charges and going back to jail, gave investigators a taped statement, detailing the story his best friend told him about what happened in the Scramuzza house that night.
On the witness stand Thursday, he claimed that Rodriguez told him nothing.
Defense attorneys Dwight Doskey and John Lindner objected to his testifying: prosecutors were setting him up to perjure himself, they said. Judge August J. Hand warned him of the consequences of perjury.
Assistant District Attorney Bruce Dearing asked him if he was denying the details he'd given to investigators, listing them, one-by-one: Gonzalez told Sgt. George Cox during his 2009 interrogation that Scramuzza walked in the door that night, unaware of the three men waiting for him there, with his son's bicycle in one hand and a bag of rabbit food in the other. He said Montoya-Matute held a gun as Luis Rodriguez got him on the ground. Carlos Rodriguez tied him up.
Gonzalez did not deny making any of the statements. But investigators tricked him, he said. They promised to throw the cocaine away if he made up the story they wanted to hear.
Cox countered that Gonzalez knew particulars of the killing no one could have known unless someone present told them.
Dearing went on listing what Gonzalez told investigators that Rodriguez had told him: Scramuzza started kicking and Rodriguez held him down so he wouldn't make noise as he choked to death.
Carlos whispered something to Scramuzza because, Gonzalez said, he wanted Scramuzza to know who he was before he died. Once Scramuzza was dead, and the men packed his truck full of stolen items and drove away, Carlos Rodriguez called Gina Scramuzza, Luis Rodriguez allegedly told Gonzalez.
He told her to go home and report a burglary, but to first reach into her dead husband's mouth and remove whatever he'd shoved in there to help choke him. Gonzalez didn't know what it was, but speculated a plastic bag.
On Thursday Gonzalez told the court that Carlos Rodriguez had tried to recruit him for the burglary. He'd turned him down, he said, because Carlos Rodriguez was "kind of messed up in the mind."
Gonzalez did not look at his best friend as he was led back out of the courtroom in chains. He is serving a 10-year sentence on the cocaine charge at Dixon Corrections Institute in East Feliciana Parish.
Rodriguez does not deny that he was at the house when Scramuzza was murdered. He insists, though, that he thought they were there to help Gina Scramuzza with an insurance scam, in exchange for $500 and the items they stole from her house.
For a half hour Thursday, the Scramuzza's son, Gianni, who is 16 and lives with his aunt out of state, looked at photographs of the house where his father was killed, allegedly at the behest of his mother. He did not cry, as defense attorneys feared he might. He calmly identified items stolen from his bedroom then found in Luis Rodriguez's apartment: his LSU towels and matching shower curtain; his video games; his swimming gear; the sheets from his bed; even his bunny which, he said, he'd won at the Washington Parish Fair.
Defense attorneys asked him no questions.
Rodriguez did not testify on his own behalf and the defense team presented no witnesses. Closing arguments are to begin this morning.
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