BY ANDY GARDNER
North Country This Week

CANTON -- Christopher Hebert will take the witness stand on Wednesday as the only witness for the defense in his murder trial.

The 47-year-old is being tried in St. Lawrence County Court for second-degree murder for allegedly killing Lacey Yekel, who died at age 25 around June 7, 2014. Prosecutors say Hebert severely beat her and then choked her. Yekel's skeletal remains were recovered in woods near the Massena Industrial Park on Aug. 29, 2014.

After District Attorney Gary Pasqua late on Tuesday afternoon rested the prosecution’s case, defense attorney Peter Dumas suggested the court adjourn for the day because he expects his client to go through a lengthy examination.

"If we start with this witness, it's likely to go for a while,” Dumas said.

"Anyone other than the defendant?" Judge Jerome Richards asked, to which Dumas replied “No.”

The prosecution’s case wrapped up after hearing a recording from Brandy Bressard, who said she and Hebert dated from 2009 to 2014.

Bressard went and visited Hebert twice while he was locked up at Five Points Correctional Facility on April 4, 2017 and June 13, 2017. The recording the jury heard on Tuesday came from the June visit.

Bressard testified that she began writing letters to Hebert while he was incarcerated at the direction of New York State Police in 2014. That started after she told investigators about a phone call she received from him around the time of Yekel’s death. She testified earlier Tuesday that Hebert called her around the time of Yekel’s death and told her that he killed a man, but when she visited him at Five Points in 2017, she got him to admit he killed Yekel.

Bressard said she went there and started a conversation where she made Hebert believe she wanted to rekindle their relationship upon his release from prison.

"How can you guarantee you won't fly off the handle and things won't get physical? … I think a lot of our last conversation when I was here, right, and that worries me a little bit. Like how can you guarantee me you're not going to get all pissed off about something ... and what happened between you and Lacey isn't going to happen to me?" Bressard can be heard saying to Hebert on the tape.

"I don't really know, like, the whole situation. I know what I know from phone calls,” she says later on.

"If I did let her go ... she would have called the cops,” Hebert can be heard saying on the tape.

Bressard and Hebert can be heard on the tape disagreeing about what he told her the night he called her back in 2014, around the time of Yekel’s death.

"I specifically never said it was a dude,” Hebert says.

"I feel like you did,” Bressard replies.

"I feel like you did” say it was a man, “I just never corrected you,” Hebert says back.

Hebert later says he punched Yekel “like six times, maybe five” and at one point says "You know what she said to me? 'You killed me.'" James Waite a former St. Lawrence County jail inmate who served time with Hebert last fall, testified earlier in the trial that Hebert told him Yekel’s last words to her were “I’m dead, Chris.”

"I was consciously aware,” Hebert says on the tape from 2017. "I knew that's what I was doing. I was doing that to end the situation."

"It clearly didn't work,” Bressard replies.

Hebert also describes an element of the crime scene to which state police investigators testified.

"I buried her clothes in a different area,” Hebert says on the tape.

Inv. Brendan Frost had previously testified that they found Yekel’s clothes balled up and hidden beneath a rock about 40 feet from the tarp containing her partial skeletal remains.

Under cross-examination, Dumas attacked Bressard’s credibility.

He showed the witness a statement she gave to state police on Oct. 2, 2014.

"Do you remember telling Inv. (Jason) Pelkey ... 'Chris said he couldn't tell me what happened because he didn't want to get involved,’” Dumas said, referring to the phone call Bressard said she received from Hebert around when Yekel died. Although she didn’t recall saying that, Bressard later admitted it when shown her written statement.

Dumas then pointed to testimony Bressard made to a grand jury in 2018 and read from the transcript “He told me that he killed him,” which Bressard acknowledged differed from her earlier statement.

Later during cross-examination, Dumas asked Bressard why Hebert may have told her he killed a man.

"It made sense, if Chris had something to do with a girl, you would have gotten jealous?" Dumas asked, to which Bressard answered “Yes.”

Dumas tried to paint Hebert as someone who frequently exaggerates and takes credit for things he didn’t do. He pointed to a portion of the 2017 recording where Hebert mentions a story, which involved the Greek mythological characters Venus and Psyche, that he wrote out and sent to Bressard in the mail.

"I don't know if he tried to take credit for it or not. He tried to take it from a book,” Bressard said.

Dumas also pointed to an earlier statement Bressard gave to police where she called Hebert a “bullshitter.”

Under questioning from Pasqua, Bressard said she believes Hebert told her the truth about Yekel.

"Why did you tell him those things?" Pasqua said, referring to Bressard saying on the tape that she wanted to get back together with Hebert.

"I knew if I convinced him ... he'd tell me exactly what happened,” she said, adding that she became convinced of his guilt after reading a 2014 newspaper article about the discovery of Yekel’s remains “and everything from what he had told me matched up with what was in the paper."

“Did you believe what he was telling you" at Five Points Correctional Facility? Pasqua asked

"I did,” Bressard answered.

The trial resumes Wednesday morning at 9:30 a.m. in St. Lawrence County Court.