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| -Lurid Crime Tales- |
| When Elvis Impersonators Attack |
| 2007-07-18 |
| A blood-soaked “house of horrors” greeted Revere police and firefighters when they answered an Elvis impersonator’s 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 doesn’t 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 Surette’s blood sprayed on the ceiling and walls of the Frye Street apartment he’d 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 Daigle’s 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 Surette’s 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 he’d 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 |
| #5 If you knew Revere, this would neither shock nor surprise you... |
| Posted by: tu3031 2007-07-18 16:59 |
| #4 "Love me tender, Love me true, Pin me to the wall. All your wishes now fulfilled. I'd like to kick you in the balls" / thank you, thank you, thank you very much.... |
| Posted by: USN, Ret. 2007-07-18 15:10 |
| #3 I need to know more about these men's pasts. Elvis could have been cleaning out the sewar of society. Next time, Elvis, use a hammer. |
| Posted by: wxjames 2007-07-18 11:57 |
| #2 "I HAD to hack him into bloody chunks, yer Honor!" Lotsa luck with that defense. |
| Posted by: mojo 2007-07-18 09:56 |
| #1 Reminds me of Kevin Costner's Elvis flick [paraphrased] > "Before I die, I just gotta know - *cough * dyin'* cough* - was Elvis really your [ilegitimate] father? |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2007-07-18 04:24 |