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When Elvis Impersonators Attack
A blood-soaked house of horrors greeted Revere police and firefighters when they answered an Elvis impersonators 911 call and found that the homicidal King had pinned a half-naked guest to his living room floor with a 2-foot-long machete.It doesnt get more serious than this, grim-faced assistant Suffolk District Attorney John Powers said yesterday as the first-degree murder trial of Robert Daigle, 71, got underway - a murder, Powers said, that was without justification and excuse. The Sept. 19, 2003, killing of James Surette, 39, was so grisly Superior Court Judge Linda Giles cautioned jurors to steel themselves against letting pity for the dead man cloud their objectivity. His black pompadour, mutton-chop sideburns and white leisure suit replaced with shoulder-length gray hair and casual business attire, Daigle listened intently as Powers described how Surettes blood sprayed on the ceiling and walls of the Frye Street apartment hed stopped by for drinks. Powers told of how Daigle later shared with investigators seeing chunks flying off the body of Surette as he allegedly hacked him with the blade 27 times, having already plunged a kitchen knife through his heart. Daigle, looking more like Neil Diamond yesterday than Elvis, admits he did the deed, but claimed self-defense. There is no more powerful human emotion than the will to live, his defense attorney, J.W. Carney Jr., said in his opening statement. Mr. Daigle felt that terror in his own home. He did what he had to do so that he would not die. The ill-fated fast friends allegedly met at a bus stop on Sept. 18, 2003, and Surette, who also lived in Revere, accepted Daigles invitation to come by that night and party. By the following morning, Sept. 19, 2003, Daigle contends, Surette was drunk and becoming affectionate in a non-sexual way. Daigle told him to leave; Surette allegedly refused and settled onto a couch to sleep clutching a kitchen knife to his bare chest after picking Daigle up and slamming him onto a glass table. Mr. Daigle thought the only thing he could do was to act to save himself, Carney said. Daigle snatched the knife from Surette and buried it in his chest - a wound that proved fatal, but not before Surettes skull was crushed and he was butchered with a mail-order machete during a frenzied, two-minute attack. Robert Daigle was so frightened that he would be killed, Carney said, that he could not stop until he was absolutely, positively sure that hed killed the man who was going to kill him. Dismissing the urgency, Powers noted that Daigle took a shower and changed his clothes before summoning help. Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-07-18 |
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