From Melanie Alnwick’s Mansion Murders
Fox 5DC FB group
“A couple of questions answered today in the #MansionMurders trial.
One, why didn’t Daron’s brother Darrell testify to the grand jury?
This revelation came out of earshot of the jury, when attorneys for the prosecution and the defense were arguing over language regarding how Darrell’s phone had been searched.
Assistant US Attorney Laura Bach said of Darrell: “he has been cooperative, he has been willing to provide testimony, he didn’t ask for immunity. WE decided not to have him testify to the grand jury. He hid nothing.”
The story about a housekeeper who saw a man watching the Savopoulos house was also clarified.
Turns out it was a woman who worked on Garfield Street NW. She testified that she saw a man who she was afraid of, two days before the murders.
Maria DaSilva spotted him around 5:15 pm on Garfield Street, near the intersection with Cleveland Ave and 32nd NW.
“He was pacing back and forth,” she told defense attorney Jeffrey Stein. “He was spitting on the ground, I had a great deal of fear.”
DaSilva said she saw him go around some bushes, then back into Cleveland Avenue and turn up 32nd - which is a short walk from the Savopoulos’ home at 32nd and Woodland.
She told the defense that she didn’t see the man’s face, and that he was wearing a baseball cap. He did not have long hair, or any hair that could’ve been tucked under cap, she thought - because she “saw him very well from behind.” She told the defense the man she saw was not Daron Wint - but that when her employer showed her the news reports of a suspect captured on surveillance video fleeing the scene of the burning Porsche, DaSilva thought that “could” have been the odd man she saw days earlier.
She admitted on cross-examination that the man could have been on drugs, based on his behavior, and that she never saw the face of either man.
Fox 5 DC”