Homicide victim Jackie Wirth's aunt, Peggy Lufkin, has draped Wirth's turquoise-and-black checkered scarf over her shoulders daily for the past two weeks as she sat in the front row of a New London courtroom.

"I wrapped her love around me for the whole trial," Lufkin said Wednesday while waiting in the hallway of the Huntington Street courthouse for closing arguments in the murder trial of the man charged in Wirth's fatal shooting, LaShawn R. "BI" Cecil.

Lufkin, who is raising the two young boys orphaned when somebody shot Wirth, 26, through the front door of her Norwich apartment on Dec. 14, 2011, said she's had her "ups and downs" while listening to the details of her niece's death.  

The 12-member jury is expected to begin deliberating on Thursday morning, and she and her family are hoping for a guilty verdict. Lufkin said she believed the jailhouse informants in the case, even though the defense continually attacked their credibility, and that phone records showed Cecil was in the area when Wirth was killed.

"I hope the jury has seen what I know to be the truth,"  Lufkin said. "I hope we don't get a hung jury."

On the other side of the courtroom, Cecil's family members are hoping for an acquittal. 

The 36-year-old was questioned immediately after the crime, but not arrested until 2015, when police put together a case that relied heavily on acquaintances and jailhouse informants. Testimony revealed that police initially focused the investigation on Sean Lindo, the boyfriend of Wirth's cousin, who had "some friction" with Wirth. They eliminated him as a suspect after conducting gunshot residue testing and talking with Lindo and others.

At the trial, two of the jailhouse informants had recanted their statements. While the state was able to show the jury video recordings of their police interrogations, the defense had attacked their credibility during cross-examination and through a Boston College professor who said that testimony from jailhouse informants is inherently unreliable. 

During his summation, prosecutor Stephen M. Carney pointed at Cecil repeatedly while highlighting the strongest evidence, including a 9 mm handgun magazine divers found in the Thames River with the guidance of a man who said he bought it from Cecil shortly after the shooting; cellphone records that put Cecil in the area of Wirth's apartment near the time of the shooting; a videotaped interrogation of the man who allegedly drove Cecil to the crime scene; and incriminating statements Cecil allegedly made to a girlfriend and fellow prisoners. Also, car rental records confirmed that the alleged driver, Billy Colello, had rented a Chrysler 200, the type of car seen on nearby Boswell Avenue by an officer who was speeding to the crime scene.

Cecil, Carney said, is the only person who talked about a knock on the door of Wirth's apartment besides Wirth herself in her dying words in a 911 call. A former girlfriend of Cecil's had testified that during a fight, he threatened to kill her "like I killed that girl in Norwich," and a man incarcerated for nonpayment of child support said Cecil, acting arrogant, had mentioned during a trip in a prison transport van that he didn't know there were children in the room. Another jailhouse informant told police that Cecil said he had "dumped," or shot through the door when the occupant of the apartment would not open it, then "bounced," or fled the scene.

Defense attorney Christopher Duby put a picture of Lindo, the original suspect, on the projector and told the jurors that was the person who had killed Wirth. While police tested Lindo for gunshot residue about 30 hours after the crime, they hadn't done so for Cecil, Duby said. Lindo was incarcerated in Canada following the Wirth killing, but police witnesses said they did not know his current whereabouts.

"The real killer is on the street," Duby said. "LaShawn over there was an afterthought when he talked to police about this case."

k.florin@theday.com