Virginia Beach man found guilty of killing former girlfriend with cyanide

A 30-year-old man was found guilty Friday of injecting his former girlfriend with a fatal dose of cyanide as she walked up to her house on Valentine’s Day 2017.

Jurors convicted Joseph Merlino III of first-degree murder after 1½ hours of deliberations. They will return Monday to decide on a sentence, which could be up to life in prison.

Merlino shook his head slightly when the verdict was read, but did not otherwise react. His mother, who has attended all of his court appearances, was not in the courtroom.

Family and friends of Ellie Tran, the woman who was murdered, teared up and hugged prosecutors afterward.

Tran, 35, the mother of Merlino’s young daughter, had just pulled into her driveway around 8 p.m. on Feb. 14, 2017, and was walking to her door when an assailant jumped out and injected her with cyanide in her left buttock. She died the next day. The incident was captured by a surveillance camera outside her home.

Merlino was one of five witnesses called by the defense during the four-day trial. He emphatically denied involvement in the case.

“Did you kill Ellie?” Assistant Public Defender Sarah Murphy asked him at the end of her direct examination.

“Absolutely not,” he said.

Much of his time on the witness stand was spent in a heated exchange with Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Janee Joslin. The prosecutor repeatedly asked him to explain the most damaging evidence against him, including internet searches related to cyanide that were made on his laptop computer and the online purchase of a $68 stainless steel syringe.

“You were a very, very busy guy on the 24th of January (2017) – would you agree?” Joslin asked, referring to the day that the searches were made and the syringe was bought through the Etsy website.

The searches included, “How many milligrams of cyanide will kill you?” and “What if cyanide gets injected?”

The syringe was delivered several days later to a pizza restaurant where Merlino reportedly ate everyday that month. A co-owner of the restaurant said she saw him walk out with a package that was delivered there sometime that month.

Merlino denied making the computer searches or buying the syringe. He said the MacBook computer that was used belonged to his cellphone repair business, and there were at least a half-dozen people who had access to it. He also testified that he had never heard of the Etsy website before it became an issue in his case.

But he did admit to writing coded letters from jail to his mother and new girlfriend in China.

He said he encrypted them because jail staff had repeatedly stolen his mail and failed to send it out. But he adamantly denied writing them in an attempt to get the women to fabricate evidence for him.

Merlino told jurors he was visiting his half-brother in Victoria, about 150 miles away and at least a 2½-hour drive, when the murder occurred. He arrived there two days before and was still there when police arrested him.

Alexander Armstrong, Merlino’s half-brother who admitted to having felony convictions for carnal knowledge of a child and failing to register as a violent sex offender, said he saw his brother when he left for work the morning of the murder. He said he next saw him around 9:30 p.m., which would not have left enough time for him to assault Tran and then return to Victoria. He also said he was asleep when his brother got home that night.

Armstrong said he did not believe that the man seen on the surveillance video was his brother. He said the man on the video had a bushier beard and a bald spot.

But when prosecutor Mario Lorello played the tape again for jurors during his closing statement, he argued that it was not a bald spot, but a glare on the video. The spot moved away from the assailant’s head as the video was played.

Lorello also argued that Merlino purposely wore a reflective vest at the time of the attack knowing that it would create a glare and distort the camera’s resolution.

At the end of his argument, Lorello displayed a photo of a smiling Tran on an overhead projector. He then asked jurors to find Merlino guilty.

“This defendant murdered her in a vicious, horrible way,” Lorello said. “Be her voice because she doesn’t have one anymore.”

https://pilotonline.com/news/local/crime/article_20c78b08-7642-11e8-bd6c-c36b95f9d9cd.html

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4009960&forum_id=2#36306744)