A former Connecticut man has been sentenced to at least 20 years in prison after pleading no contest to two murder charges in the shooting deaths of two people in Woodbury over a drug debt nearly six years ago.
Manuel Gomez, 35, pleaded no contest Wednesday in Washington County Superior criminal court in Barre to two charges of second-degree murder as well as first-degree arson in the deaths of Carol Fradette and David Thompson.
The bodies of Fradette, 29, and Thompson, 48, were found inside their burned homes on Bliss Road in Woodbury on Oct. 30, 2018, according to Vermont State Police.
As part of a plea agreement, Gomez was sentenced Wednesday by Judge John Pacht to 20 years to life. It calls for him to serve 20 years in prison after which time he’d be eligible for probation. He will receive credit toward his prison term for roughly three years he has served behind bars awaiting trial.
Gomez had initially been charged with two counts of aggravated murder in each of the two deaths. A charge of aggravated murder carries a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole, if convicted.
“The court will accept this agreement,” Pacht said Wednesday in court before handing down the sentence, adding, “This is a case with risk for both sides, incredible risk for both sides.”
In a key ruling issued last year, Judge Kevin Griffin, who was presiding in the case at that time, stated that investigators should have obtained a warrant to search the contents of a cell phone found at the scene that helped lead to the charges against Gomez in the case.
The prosecution had contended the device was found abandoned at the scene justifying the search of its contents.
However, the judge didn’t agree.
“The mere presence of the phone at the crime scene does not lead to the conclusion that Defendant intended to abandon the private information within the phone, nor do the facts support the officers’ assumption that it was abandoned,” Griffin wrote in the ruling.
Exactly what evidence would be suppressed as a result of that ruling remained a matter of ongoing litigation in the case.
Zachery Weight, a Washington County deputy state’s attorney, said in court Wednesday that the plea agreement took into account several factors, including the ongoing litigation related to the admissibility of certain evidence.
“We are left with a choice ultimately of continued litigation and risk or a conclusion, finality and accountability,” Weight said.
“Even if the state is not 100% onboard with the way this is resolving with respect toward how it would like to resolve,” Weight said, “it does offer permanent convictions and a permanent record.”
The sentence also carried a “substantial” prison term, the prosecutor told the judge.
No family members of the Thompson and Fradette families provided any victim statements, Weight added.
“We would like the convictions and the sentence to serve as the ultimate statement,” the prosecutor said.
“These people, David Thompson and Carol Fradette, no matter what they were dealing with in their own personal lives and their own relationships, their lives mattered,” Weight said. “They should have been able to enjoy the following day, Halloween, of 2018.”
The bodies of Thompson and Fradette were found on a property in Woodbury in two separate residences, about 150 feet apart. Thompson, according to charging documents, died of multiple gunshot wounds, and Fradette was killed by blunt force trauma and a single gunshot wound to her head.
Also, the filings stated, the couple’s three dogs were shot and killed, and the residences were set ablaze late on the night of Oct. 30, 2018, in an attempt to conceal the homicides.
The charging documents stated Gomez had been selling “large quantities” of heroin to Thompson and that Thompson owed him more than $20,000.
A cellphone, which investigators discovered on the ground at the crime scene, yielded several clues to investigators, according to the charging documents.
Among those clues, the filings stated, were Gomez’s DNA, messages from his email accounts, and data that showed several trips between Hartford, Connecticut, where Gomez had been residing, and the property in Woodbury, including a visit on the night of the slayings.
Kelly Green, the attorney representing Gomez, said during Wednesday’s hearing that her client also considered several factors in agreeing to the plea deal.
“He is not entering into this agreement lightly,” Green said of Gomez. “He is going to be serving an extremely long sentence and to him that is a heavy measure of accountability.”
Pacht, the judge, asked Gomez during the proceeding if he had anything he wanted to say.
“I’m good,” Gomez replied in declining the opportunity to address the court.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Man gets at least 20 years in plea deal in Woodbury double murder .