Katherine Bunnell listens to her lawyer give opening arguments yesterday. Bunnell and her ex-boyfriend, Gilbert Delestre, face murder charges.

The Providence Journal Steve Szydlowski

PROVIDENCE — Katherine S. Bunnell and her ex-boyfriend, Gilbert Delestre, now blame each other for the death of Thomas “T.J.” Wright, their 3-year-old foster child, who was beaten so brutally 3½ years ago he was declared brain dead and taken off life support.

But on the night of the beating, Bunnell and Delestre weren’t trading accusations.

They were trying to pin the blame on the babysitter, a police officer testified yesterday –– 15-year-old Kayla Roderick, who was asleep on the sofa of their Woonsocket apartment when Bunnell and Delestre came home from a nightclub around 2:30 a.m. on Oct. 30, 2004, and flew into a rage, dragged T.J. out of bed and beat him for making a mess on the living room floor.

Police Officer Peter Menard testified before Judge Gilbert V. Indeglia in Superior Court, where Bunnell’s trial began yesterday.

Like Delestre, 27, Bunnell, 24, has been charged with murder and conspiracy to murder in the fatal beating. Because each is expected to implicate the other, the two are being tried separately.

When police arrived at the apartment, Bunnell didn’t accuse Delestre of wrongdoing.

“She said, ‘Tell the police. Tell the police what the babysitter did’,” Menard said, recounting what Bunnell said when he and other officers went to the bedroom where T.J. had been sleeping with his brothers, David, 10, and Mickey, 6.

The boys were the children of Bunnell’s sister, Karen Wright. The Department of Children, Youth and Families had placed them in foster care with Bunnell and Delestre after Wright was imprisoned in Illinois for transporting marijuana.

The boys’ eyes were open wide –– “they almost looked like deer in the headlights” –– Menard testified, as the police asked them what happened, and Bunnell raised her voice, demanding “at least three times” that they “tell the police what the babysitter did.”

Delestre was yelling the same thing, Menard testified. The boys were “very nervous” about saying anything, he testified. “The only other thing I said to her,” he recounted, “was she needed to calm down and just let the kids speak.”

The trial is expected to last two weeks. “You’re going to hear from Katherine Bunnell. She’s going to take that witness stand and tell you what happened,” defense lawyer Gerard H. Donley told the jury.

While Bunnell did slap T.J., drag him around the apartment and empty a container of milk on him, she didn’t administer the blows that led to his death, Donley said. Delestre did, he told the jury.

“The evidence will show that the slaps, the pulling, the dragging and the pouring of the milk –– however objectionable that was –– weren’t the cause of the death of this child. A vicious beating was, and the evidence will show you who did it,” Donley said.

Delestre and Bunnell, who have two daughters, Destiny, 7, and Daziya, 5, had their parental rights terminated as a result of the T.J. Wright slaying, which brought a storm of criticism of the DCYF.

The agency was accused by the Office of the Child Advocate of ignoring warning signs that Bunnell and Delestre were unfit to be foster parents, because, among other things, the couple had a history of drug use and Delestre was arrested for possession of marijuana in Arkansas in 2003.

Assistant Attorney General Scott Erickson said that the evidence would show Bunnell and Delestre took turns beating T.J. the night he was fatally injured.

“This isn’t something that happened in just a moment,” he told the jury. “This is something that went on and on.”

Bunnell, who had her hair twisted in a top knot and wore a black pantsuit, wept as Erickson delivered his opening statement.

The blood rose in her face and she objected audibly when Erickson accused her of trying to snatch T.J. from Delestre’s cousin, Jose Santiago, after Santiago, distraught that the child was unresponsive, got on the telephone with the 911 operator and tried to administer CPR.

“Yesterday, Mr. Donley used a word –– ‘corporal punishment’ –– to describe the actions of this defendant,” Erickson said, addressing the jury. “Folks, the only appropriate word for describing the actions of this defendant and Gilbert Delestre is murder.”

Testimony is scheduled to resume this morning, with Lt. Normand Galipeau, another police officer who went to the couple’s apartment the night of the beating, returning to the witness stand.

jcastell@projo.com