More on murdered actress Jennifer Stahl
John W. Donaldson
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Stahl,+Jennifer
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/05/nyregion/05CARN.html
Survivors Recount for 2 Juries Details of Killings Above Deli
By SUSAN SAULNY
Rosemond Dane told two juries yesterday that something "didn't seem
right" when two men entered her friend's apartment above the Carnegie
Delicatessen. The tension that froze everyone else in the room. The
heavy coats on a hot summer day.
There was one other clue, Ms. Dane testified at the trials of the two
men accused of shooting five people in the apartment on May 10, 2001:
the way her friend, Jennifer Stahl, had second thoughts after deciding
to buzz one of the men up, saying, "I don't think I should have let
him in."
Those were among the last words spoken by Ms. Stahl, a former actress
who had turned to singing and selling high-grade marijuana. Minutes
later, she was dead of a gunshot wound to the head, as were Ms. Dane's
boyfriend, Charles Helliwell III, 36, and another guest, Stephen King,
32.
The chilling testimony from Ms. Dane and the other survivor, Anthony
Veader, were the first eyewitness accounts of a casual get-together
that turned into a bloodbath. They gave their testimony in State
Supreme Court in Manhattan, before a packed courtroom and the two
defendants, Sean Salley and Andre Smith, who are being tried before
separate juries.
The jurors also watched a videotape of Mr. Salley's statement to the
police, in which he said that the visit to Ms. Stahl's apartment was
meant to be a robbery, but that the plans went wrong almost as soon as
he and Mr. Smith entered the top-floor apartment near Seventh Avenue
and 55th Street.
"When their presence was made, when their energy entered the room,
everyone was on high alert immediately," Ms. Dane testified, recalling
how the men began to pull things out of their coats. First she saw
duct tape, she said. Then she saw a gun.
Ms. Dane said that she tried to run away down a narrow hallway, but
that Mr. Smith — the "broad-shouldered one" — pulled her
back into the cramped living room where he waved his gun and ordered
everyone onto the floor with hands behind their backs.
Mr. Smith, who was holding the gun, took Ms. Stahl into her recording
studio, where she ran her marijuana business, Ms. Dane said, while Mr.
Salley — who she said was thinner and dark-skinned and had
braided hair — bound the four guests with duct tape.
Ms. Dane testified that her face was on the carpeted floor when she
heard Ms. Stahl pleading from the studio: "Don't hurt anyone! Take
everything and leave!"
Ms. Dane said that before her wrists were bound, she eyed the front
door, thinking of escape, but that Mr. Salley said to her, "Don't even
think about going there," and ordered her to get her head down.
She begged for sympathy, saying that she was pregnant — a lie
— but her hands were bound like Mr. Helliwell's and Mr.
Veader's.
She could not see what happened next, she said. But Mr. Salley, in his
taped testimony, said that Mr. Smith then gave him the gun and that
they switched places. According to Mr. Salley, Mr. Smith said: "Point
it at her," meaning Ms. Stahl. Mr. Salley said that he had been
pointing the gun at the ground, and that when he lifted it he was so
nervous that he accidentally fired. Ms. Stahl fell.
"At the time I was so scared, I hoped she had just fainted," Mr.
Salley said, adding that he dropped the gun and started making his way
out of the apartment. "My head was so boggled, all I could think of
was to get out of there." He said that, on his way out, he heard four
more shots and kept running.
By Mr. Smith's account, however, he was nowhere near the apartment on
the night of the shootings, according to his lawyer's opening remarks.
Mr. Smith maintains that the authorities have the wrong man.
Ms. Dane testified that while she was on the floor she heard the shot
that killed Ms. Stahl and almost immediately, two more shots. There
was one more to come — for her. "I felt a gun on the back of my
head," she said. "Before I could think to do anything, I screamed,
`No!' and threw my head back and over to the side to try to see, but I
was shot."
She then heard a door slam, and was amazed to be awake, not dead.
Since her feet were not bound, she stood and ran to the others.
Mr. Veader, a film and television hair stylist who said he had been at
the apartment to cut Ms. Stahl's hair and also buy marijuana,
testified that he was lying on the floor in great pain and praying.
Like Ms. Dane, he had flinched at the last second, so the bullet only
grazed his head. His testimony is expected to continue today.
Ms. Dane said she saw Mr. Veader reach for his cell phone and call
911. Then she knelt beside Mr. Helliwell. They lived together in the
Virgin Islands and had been visiting New York City for a wedding, and
were staying overnight with Ms. Stahl.
"I put my hands on him and he exhaled," Ms. Dane said, "and I thought
then to free his hands and while I was kneeling with him a minute or
two, I knew that I was losing him. I knew he was dying."
She whimpered as she described the vomit and blood around the head of
Mr. King, a musician who had stopped by to use Ms. Stahl's recording
studio. He was unconscious, she said, and she could see where he had
been shot.
On the stand, Ms. Dane spoke slowly and carefully, trying to maintain
her composure but losing it several times. As she broke down, loud
gasps and crying could be heard from the rows of relatives and friends
who had squeezed themselves into the back rows of the courtroom.
"This has been the hardest day," said one of Ms. Stahl's friends,
Katya Surrence. "Everyone wanted to hear what really happened, but the
horror of it is so terrible."