Homicide victim Casey Chadwick's boyfriend spent the last night of Chadwick's life with another woman, then panicked when he arrived home on the afternoon of June 15, 2015, to find her and his drug stash missing, according to testimony Tuesday in New London Superior Court.  

It would be some time before Jean "Bugsy" Joseph looked in the living room closet and found the body of his girlfriend of four years. Then he would call 911, barely intelligible as he wailed, "She's dead!" and "It's bad!" and "No, no, no!".

A jury of 12 regular members and four alternates heard the 911 call and testimony from Joseph and four other witnesses on the first day of the murder trial of Jean Jacques, who is charged with fatally stabbing Chadwick at her apartment at 16 Spaulding St.

Chadwick's boyfriend pointed to Jacques at the defense table and identified him as "Zoe," a man he said he met through Chadwick, who had "vouched for him" and said he was a nice guy.

At the time, Jacques, a 41-year-old Haitian national, was on parole for a 1996 shooting on Laurel Hill Avenue that left a man dead and a woman critically injured, having served 16 years for attempted murder. 

He is accused of fatally stabbing Chadwick in the head and neck.

Jacques sat at the defense table with attorney Sebastian O. DeSantis. He wore a dress shirt and slacks and used a headset to hear two Haitian interpreters who sat behind him in the front row of the courtroom gallery.

The victim's parents and close friends, as well as members of the Survivors of Homicide support group, listened from the courtroom gallery.

Jacques, who had been turned over to immigration officials and set free twice after his first prison stint, faces up to 60 years in prison if convicted of murder.

In taking his case to trial, he rejected an offer from prosecutor David J. Smith to plead guilty in exchange for a 45-year prison sentence.

Prosecutor David J. Smith played Joseph's 911 call while Norwich patrolman Matthew Goddu, the second officer to arrive at the scene, testified.

Goddu said he walked by the still frantic and crying Joseph and another man on the front porch and went to a second-floor apartment, where he saw Chadwick, unresponsive and with a "large laceration to the neck" in the living room closet.

The apartment smelled as if somebody had recently used a strong cleaning agent, he testified. Chadwick was presumed dead at the scene by a paramedic.

Joseph, testifying later in the morning, said he and Chadwick had gone to Mystic the previous day to purchase a quarter pound of marijuana.

He said they smoked together and watched the television show "Game of Thrones" before he left after 10 p.m. for the apartment of Johene Jean-Baptiste, the mother of his son.

Though he said he planned to care for his son while Jean-Baptiste went out for the night, she stayed home and they fell asleep together on the couch.

He said he ignored a phone call from Chadwick, but when she sent a text at about 11:30 p.m. that "Zoe" was at the apartment, he called Jacques and told him he would see him the next day.

Joseph admitted on the witness stand that he was selling crack cocaine and marijuana at the time and that when he returned home the next day, after dropping his son off at day care and going to a doctor's appointment, Chadwick and the drugs were missing.

Chadwick was a "neat freak," he said, but the apartment was out of order.

Her wallet and car keys were there, but it would be a couple of hours before he opened the living room closet and found her in a sitting position with her throat slashed.

First, he called her best friend, knocked on the neighbor's door and left the apartment to go to a friend's house.

He said asked the friend to call police to see if Chadwick was in custody and checked with a bail bondsman and the local courthouse.

He said he returned to Spaulding Street and called "Zoe," who said he hadn't seen Chadwick.

"I really started panicking," Joseph testified. "I went in the bathroom, pushed the shower curtain aside. I opened the kitchen closet. I looked under the bed. That's when I opened the closet in the living room and that's when I found her."

The prosecutor circulated photos of the victim to the jury after Judge Barbara Bailey Jongbloed warned the panel the pictures were graphic and that they should set aside their emotions.

The jury viewed a video of the crime scene during testimony from detective Jeffrey Payette from the state police Eastern District Major Crime Squad.  

During the afternoon break, with the jury out of the room, Jacques stood up to tell Jongbloed, in English, that police had planted drugs and counterfeit money on him when they arrested him hours after Chadwick's body was found, and that a jailhouse informant set to testify against him on Wednesday also was planted by authorities.

The judge said she would allow Jacques' attorney to present evidence of his claims, even though she ruled previously that the state would be allowed to call the jailhouse informant, Tywan Jenkins, to the witness stand and to present information about the drug arrest.

The trial is expected to last two to three weeks.

k.florin@theday.com