BARNSTABLE – The 16 jurors in the Quoizel Wilson murder trial in Barnstable Superior Court have seen the defendant every day for the last week, sitting quietly in court, dressed in a dark sweater, white shirt and necktie. But Friday, for the first time, they heard his voice.
Wilson is accused of first degree murder in the shooting death of Trudie Hall of Nantucket in 2010.
He was an early suspect in the case and police arrived at his house to question him within hours of Hall being reported missing.
In that first interview on July 28, Wilson said he knew who Hall was and was friendly with her and that’s as far as their relationship went.
But a week later, on August 3, he contacted Barnstable Police Sergeant John York and asked for a private meeting. York and State Police Trooper Mark Powell of the Cape and Islands District Attorney’s Office met Wilson in the parking lot of the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce headquarters off Shootflying Hill Road in Centerville.
The three sat at a picnic table and Wilson agreed to be tape recorded.
Jurors heard the beginning of that tape recording on Friday and will hear more on Monday.
On the tape, Wilson, who was married at the time, said he was having an affair with Hall that began with Hall “liking” first his wife and then him on Facebook the previous January. In February of 2010, they began a sexual relationship that took place mostly at her parents’ home in Mashpee.
He said that he knew Hall was pregnant and it could be his baby.
“One time the condom did break,” he said. Wilson said he gave Hall money to buy the morning after pill but he did not know if she took the pill.
On January 27, 2010, the day Trudie Hall arrived in Hyannis from Nantucket, Wilson said he and Hall had sexual relations at the Bayside Resort in West Yarmouth.
Also during Friday’s testimony, jurors had a first-hand look at the sites associated with the case. A chartered bus took them first to the Bayside Resort in West Yarmouth where Trudie Hall was staying the night she disappeared.
The bus then stopped at the commuter lot at exit 6 off Route 6 in West Barnstable where Hall’s rental car was found, bloody and abandoned the day after she was reported missing.
The bus drove down Service Road, an area where police were searching in the days after Hall was reported missing.
Jurors were then taken to the wooded area off Hayway Road in East Falmouth where almost two years after she went missing, Hall’s remains were found by a man walking his puppy.
The last stop on the tour was Quoizel Wilson’s former home on Great Marsh Road in Centerville.
Jurors heard from the man who found the remains, Bryan Despres of New Bedford who said he came to Falmouth often to visit an uncle and also the mother of his son who both lived in the area of Hayway Road. He said he was walking his puppy when he discovered a skull on the ground.
“My first thought was maybe it was an animal skull, a head, because it was like bleached in the sun, that’s how an animal skull would look if you found it in the woods, a fox or something. I picked it up and I noticed the teeth. And I said this is either a child or a woman because the teeth were real nice. I knew it was human,” he said.
They also heard from Wilson’s supervisor at Allied Waste, a trash collection company where Wilson worked at the time of the murder. Robert Healy testified that Wilson’s recycling pickup route in Falmouth went by the woods where Hall’s remains were found. Wilson worked a full shift on the Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of the week Hall went missing in July 2010 and a half day on the Friday of that week, Healy said.
Testimony in the trial is scheduled to continue on Monday.
By LAURA M. RECKFORD, CapeCod.com News Editor