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 By Harriet Ryan Court TV Adjust font size:
    BRIDGEPORT, Connecticut (Court TV) -- A lawyer accused of plunging a kitchen knife into the heart of a neighbor he suspected of molesting his toddler daughter pleaded not guilty to murder and burglary charges on Tuesday. Jonathan Edington, a 29-year-old patent attorney, waived his right to a probable cause hearing in which prosecutors would have laid out their evidence against him in the August 28 stabbing death of Barry James, 59. Asked by Fairfield County Superior Court Judge Richard Comerford Jr. if he understood the right he was giving up, Edington replied in a loud, clear voice, "Yes, I do." Comerford did not set a trial date, but scheduled another hearing for December. Edington, a bookish-looking, bespectacled man who wore a black suit, did not comment as he left the courthouse. He is free on $1 million bail. He stared at the ground and gripped the hand of his wife, Christina, whose conversation with their 2-year-old daughter last summer allegedly sparked the confrontation with James. According to a police interview with Edington's sister-in-law, his wife phoned him from her sister's vacation home in Rhode Island on a Monday afternoon in late summer and said the girl had made some troubling statements about James. The couple were already distrustful of James, an assistant funeral director who lived next door with his elderly parents, because he walked around his first-floor bedroom naked, a habit they had reported to police. In the detective's report, Edington's sister-in-law said the 2-year-old gestured toward her genitals and said, "Barry is this" and spoke of him "putting it" on her "belly and nose." "He comes to me in the starry nights," the girl told her mother, according to the sister-in-law. When Christina Edington asked the toddler to elaborate, "she replied that he makes noises that sound like 'heehaw' and then it feels like rain on her," according to the report. Moments after the conversation, according to police, Edington grabbed a Sabatier knife from the butcher block in his kitchen and burst through the screen window of James' bedroom. With James' 87-year-old mother and 91-year-old father looking on, Edington stabbed him 13 times, according to police He then returned to his house and phoned 911, telling the operator in a "monotone" voice that "someone had been stabbed." In court Tuesday, a prosecutor said he and a defense attorney will depose James' mother, Rita, next month. Jonathan Benedict said he was concerned that the health of Rita James, a frail woman who is legally blind, may deteriorate further before the trial. She and other family members have denied the molestation allegations, calling them in a statement "vicious and hurtful." Christina Edington filed a complaint detailing the child's claims after James' death, but Fairfield police have not disclosed the results of their investigation. Outside court Tuesday, family lawyer Richard Meehan Jr. said he thought it was unlikely that a child as young as Edington's daughter could make those statements. "My grandchildren who I consider to be very bright and precocious could never articulate the kind of things that are in this case," he said, adding that he hoped a criminal trial would vindicate James. "We don't want this to be his legacy." |
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