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	Daughter's Statement Read at Trial of Man Charged with Killing Chatham Priest By Peggy Wright Daily Record November 9, 2011 http://www.dailyrecord.com/article/20111109/NJNEWS/311090016/Daughter-s-statement-read-at-trial-of-man-charged-with-killing-Chatham-priest Five hours before he admittedly stabbed the Rev. Edward Hinds to death in Chatham, church custodian Jose Feliciano looked woebegone, as though he "had the weight of the world on his shoulders," a trial witness testified Wednesday. "He wasn't angry or in any homicidal rage, was he?" Morris County Prosecutor Robert A. Bianchi asked the witness, Robert Kajor, whose two children attended the St. Patrick Elementary School at the time Hinds was slain in 2009. Kajor replied no. Kajor said that he and his wife, as parents of children at St. Patrick's, were required to volunteer. His task was an infrequent lunch duty, during which he helped children pour their milk and clean tables after their meals. He said he saw Feliciano, the janitor, on these occasions and always enjoyed conversing with the "upbeat, happy" man. But on Oct. 22, 2009, Kajor said, Feliciano sat alone at a lunch table, looking "downtrodden and troubled." He spoke when Kajor initiated a conversation but kept his head down and only occasionally looked up. "He looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders," Kajor said. On Wednesday, Bianchi and defense lawyers for the 66-year-old defendant on trial in Morristown for murder also stipulated that certain statements that Feliciano's then-14-year-old daughter gave police in November 2009 about her father would be read to the jury. The stipulation spares the girl from having to confront her father in court. The purpose of testimony about Feliciano's demeanor before and after the stabbing of Hinds between 5 and 5:30 p.m. on Oct. 22, 2009, was elicited by prosecutors to try to show that the custodian was not behaving in an angry or out-of-control manner. He has admitted killing the priest but claims he did so in "a homicidal rage" because the priest threatened to fire him unless he performed certain, as yet unspecified acts. Daughter's view Sitting in the witness chair, Bianchi read to the jury preselected portions of the girl's statement to detectives. She had stated that her father was late getting out of work on Oct. 22 and he asked her, unusually, to sit in the front seat of the family van alongside her mother, the driver, while he rested with a headache in a rear seat for the drive from Chatham to their home in Easton, Pa. "He was kind of quiet," the girl told police, explaining that her father usually regaled her and her mother with jokes or stories about work on their ride home. The family's custom was to drive on weekdays from Pennsylvania to Morris County, where Feliciano's wife, Marisol, would leave her husband and daughter at the church, go to work herself and then pick them up at 5 p.m. The daughter was an eighth-grader at St. Patrick's in 2009. The girl in her statement said that her father seemed "normal" at home after work, only quieter, but also unusually took the family dog for an evening walk in a playground across the street from their home. He carried a plastic bag with him, the girl stated. She said he perked up in the evening after taking a shower and walking the dog. Authorities soon after the killing discovered parts of the priest's cellular phone in the playground, along with bloody towels stuffed in a plastic bag and hidden in a trash can in that park. The girl also told detectives, according to the recitation of her statement, that her father was worried he might lose his job because a co-worker had been fired, but he tried to reassure her he would be OK. Prosecutors contend that the slain cleric,had learned of criminal allegations in Feliciano's past and planned to terminate his employment as of Oct. 23, 2009. Further testimony Wednesday had to be halted when there was a power outage in the Morris County Courthouse at 1:40 p.m. Prosecutors expect to rest their case today with final testimony from county Medical Examiner Ronald Suarez. The defense would start its case Monday. Contact: pwright@njpressmedia.com
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