By Ben Horowitz
The Star-Ledger
November 2, 2011
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/11/voice_on_911_call_was_slain_ch.html
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| Jose Feliciano, a former church custodian accused of murder in the stabbing death of the Rev. Edward Hinds, a Chatham priest, enters the Morris County Courthouse in Morristown. (Jennifer Brown/The Star-Ledger) |
MORRISTOWN — Frequently breaking into tears, a friend of the priest slain in Chatham testified today that it was the priest's voice on the 911 call received by State Police on the day he died.
The voice said the emergency was on Washington Avenue, the location of the church rectory where the slaying occurred, and then the call was cut off.
"It sounds like Ed," testified Judith Ann Conk of Nanuet, N.Y., who has frequently attended the court case with her husband. "It sounds like he's tortured, like he's in pain."
Conk testified in Superior Court in Morristown during the murder trial of Jose Feliciano, now 66, of Easton, Pa., who is accused in the Oct. 22, 2009 stabbing death of the Rev. Edward Hinds, 61, of St. Patrick Church.
Morris County Prosecutor Robert Bianchi also played for Conk a tape of the 911 dispatcher calling back, first getting a voice mail and later getting a hurried voice believed to be Feliciano, saying there was no emergency.
The voice mail message was Hinds' "regular voice," Conk said. During the third call, a muffled noise "sounds like Ed's voice in the background," she said.
Conk said she didn't know if the man answering the phone was Feliciano, because she has never heard his voice.
Conk also identified a cell phone retrieved by investigators from a park across the street from Feliciano's home in Easton as Hinds' cell phone. Conk said she had seen Hinds use the phone "multiple times."
Earlier today, a key defense theory came into play when a church administrative assistant faced questions from both sides about whether Hinds sought to "cover up" Feliciano's criminal background.
Under questioning from Feliciano's public defender, Neill Hamilton, church administrative assistant Jeannine Sorrentino acknowledged that in the late summer of 2009, she told Hinds that Feliciano's fingerprint card hadn't been returned to the State Police, as required. Hinds said, "I'll look into it, I'll take care of it," Sorrentino said.
Sorrentino acknowledged that the card "was never sent in" and that Feliciano had completed the training required of all employees and volunteers who had contact with children.
In his opening argument, Hamilton said Hinds had continually failed to submit the fingerprint card from the day he became priest in 2004. He cited that as evidence Hinds was allowing Feliciano to stay at the church as long as possible so that the janitor could continue to perform unspecified acts. Hamilton admitted Feliciano stabbed Hinds, but said he was provoked and it was a manslaughter, not a murder.
But under questioning from Bianchi, Sorrentino testified that in April 2009, Hinds told her to review all the employees' files to make sure they had undergone the criminal background checks required by the Diocese of Paterson.
"So Father Ed knows you are in possession of these documents that could expose the 'cover-up,' and he told you to check all of them to make sure everything was here," Bianchi said. "The very thing that he told you to do was the thing that exposed Mr. Feliciano's lack of a background check."
Sorrentino acknowledged that more steps were needed than just sending the fingerprint card to State Police.
Under rules tightened in 2008 by the diocese, Feliciano would have been required to go a firm in Parsippany to get his fingerprints taken, and then have the results sent to the diocese, Sorrentino said.
Also, Sorrentino acknowledged, it was her responsibility, and not Hinds' job, to ensure that all employees and volunteers who had contact with children undergo criminal background checks.
Bianchi contends Feliciano planned the murder of Hinds after the priest fired him because he had learned the janitor was a fugitive from a 1988 Pennsylvania charge involving a child.
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