PROVIDENCE -- The trial of a Woonsocket woman accused of killing a 3-year-old boy in her care will not begin for at least another six months, the prosecutor confirmed yesterday.
Katherine Bunnell, 22, and her boyfriend, Gilbert Delestre, 23, each face one count of murder and conspiracy to commit murder while serving as guardians for Thomas J. Wright, whose own mother served time in jail.
Prosecutors say Bunnell and Delestre beat Thomas so viciously in their Woonsocket apartment, they cracked both his skull and his femur, killing him in the early hours of Halloween Day, 2004.
Following a weeklong bail hearing later that year, Bunnell and Delestre were ordered held without bail at the Adult Correctional Institutions and indicted separately.
Since then, each case has been slow to progress toward trial.
Bunnell's case, scheduled for trial this week, has instead been postponed until July 10, while the defense considers hiring expert witnesses and lawyers dig through mountains of evidence, Assistant Attorney General Stacey Veroni said in an interview yesterday.
The decision to delay the case was made in a closed-door conference with Superior Court Judge Mark A. Pfeiffer yesterday morning.
Delestre's case is scheduled for a status conference on Feb. 8, though Veroni said she expects holdups in that trial as well.
Bunnell's lawyer, Gerard H. Donley, did not return a call seeking comment yesterday.
The couple, who were initially charged together, soon parted ways as lawyers for each defendant painted the other as responsible for the attack on Thomas.
Prosecutors maintained that the couple acted together, taking turns beating the boy, dragging him by his wrists, dropping him on the floor, even throwing him across the room, after they returned home from a nightclub to find the 3-year-old had made a mess in the kitchen.
In her decision following the bail hearing, District Court Judge Patricia Moore called the couple's behavior "quite disturbing."
From the earliest days, the high-profile case raised questions about the state's system of screening prospective foster parents, shining a spotlight on the Department of Children, Youth and Families.
The Office of the Child Advocate launched an independent probe to review whether the state could have done more to protect Thomas or better review the couple's application for guardianship.
That investigation, completed in November, determined that the DCYF missed at least five opportunities to rescue Thomas from the couple's Woonsocket home.
Among the errors, the report said, DCYF placed Thomas and his brothers with a couple who had a history of drug use and problems detailed in the DCYF's own records, and ignored a doctor's concerns about Bunnell becoming a foster parent.
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