WARWICK — Testimony yesterday began to detail information garnered from police interviews with James Richardson, the Cranston man accused of killing Margaret Duffy-Stephenson in November 2005.

Duffy-Stephenson, 37, was found dead on Nov. 18, 2005, just a few days after she returned from a family vacation to Florida.

Yesterday afternoon, Warwick Detective Timothy Grant — who, along with his partner, led the investigation into Duffy-Stephenson’s murder — testified that his first objectives were to identify how the attacker got into the house and set an approximate time of death for the victim, after he determined Duffy-Stephenson’s death was suspicious. Officers searched the house and found no forced entry at any of the doors or windows, Grant testified. From there, Grant said he began interviewing the witnesses — John Duffy, Duffy-Stephenson’s father, who discovered the body, and two of Duffy-Stephenson’s colleagues who’d come to check on her — to determine when she’d last been seen alive.

According to testimony, Grant said they found that Duffy-Stephenson had attended a teachers’ function on Nov. 16 at 9 p.m., and did not show up for work at Archie R. Cole Junior High School, in East Greenwich, where she was a teacher’s aide for special-needs students. The police set her time of death as sometime during the night of Nov. 16 into the morning of Nov. 17 based on those facts, Grant said.

Detectives met with James Stephenson III, Duffy-Stephenson’s husband, the afternoon her body was found, Grant said. Stephenson told detectives about his basement office, which had been ransacked and his safe emptied, his employees who worked for Picture Perfect Landscaping, and, specifically, Grant said, about Richardson, the defendant.

Richardson was hired to work for the company in 2000 and was working for Stephenson at the time of the murder. Richardson willingly came to the Warwick Police Department for questioning when asked, Grant said. Throughout the interview, which Grant said lasted over an hour, Richardson never inquired about what crime he was being questioned.

“It’s an investigative technique,” Grant said, referring to the practice of withholding information until a suspect asks for it.

Grant is expected to retake the stand this morning.

tbuford@projo.com