Katherine Bunnell testifies in her own defense yesterday.

Providence Journal / Bob Thayer

PROVIDENCE –– Gilbert Delestre, called as a witness yesterday at his girlfriend Katherine Bunnell’s trial on child murder charges, declined to testify, asserting his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Delestre, who, like Bunnell, has been charged with murder and murder conspiracy, refused to answer when Bunnell’s lawyer, Gerard H. Donley, asked whether he was in Woonsocket on the date of the murder, Oct. 30, 2004.

He refused to answer when he was asked whether he knew Bunnell or Thomas “T.J.” Wright, the 3-year-old foster child he and Bunnell are accused of beating to death.

He refused to answer when he was asked whether he was in the apartment where he lived with Bunnell when the fatal beating took place.

While Delestre, in handcuffs and with his lawyer, Robert B. Mann, at his side, was refusing to answer questions in the court-room, T.J.’s mother, Karen Wright, was outside in the corridor wailing, “I want my baby back! I want my baby back!”

“He killed him. He did that. He did that,” Wright said.

The developments came on the last day of testimony at Bunnell’s murder trial in Superior Court.

Bunnell, 24, is accused of conspiring with Delestre to beat T.J. to death after the couple returned home from a night out 3½ years ago and found a mess the toddler had made on the living-room floor.

At the time, she and Delestre had two children of their own, Destiny, 3, and Daziya, 1.

Bunnell, who took the witness stand to testify in her own defense yesterday, said she became pregnant with Destiny when she was in the ninth grade at Woonsocket High School.

The couple took custody of three boys belonging to Bunnell’s sister, Karen Wright, in February 2004, after Wright was convicted of possession of marijuana with intent to deliver and sentenced to 2½ years in prison in Illinois.

The boys, David, 10, Mickey, 6, and T.J., 3, became a source of friction between her and Delestre, Bunnell testified, even though she acknowledged that the Department for Children, Youth and Families was paying the couple $1,250 a month for taking care of them.

Bunnell’s defense is based on the theory that Delestre, 27, inflicted the fatal blows after she left to drive their baby sitter home.

The night T.J. was murdered, Bunnell left T.J. alone with Delestre, “because I didn’t feel that anything was going to happen,” she testified.

“I always leave the kids with Gilbert. Always,” she said.

Bunnell’s account of events differed starkly from the testimony of a parade of prosecution witnesses.

She said she didn’t hold T.J. by the arms when she carried him downstairs, or drop him to the floor at the foot of the stairs, as T.J.’s baby sitter, Kayla Roderick, said Bunnell did during her testimony a week ago.

She said she only slapped T.J. lightly on the face twice, and poured milk on the boy’s head to discipline him after she and Delestre returned to the apartment to find the mess.

“I walked him over to the mess. I said, ‘T.J., did you do this?’ He didn’t say yes or no,” Bunnell testified.

At that point, Bunnell testified, she slapped T.J. “The most I slapped him was two times,” she insisted.

“I didn’t slap him hard enough to leave a mark.”

The testimony, which Bunnell offered in response to questions from her defense lawyer, drew an apparently incredulous reaction from Assistant Attorney General Stacey P. Veroni.

Veroni got Bunnell to admit that, after she and Delestre noticed the mess in the living room, she yelled at the Roderick, whom she seldom paid for baby-sitting.

“You were screaming at her, weren’t you?” Veroni demanded.

“You asked her, ‘What the [expletive] happened to my house?”

Bunnell admitted yelling at Roderick. But she denied being angry at the baby sitter or even at T.J., claiming the reason she raised her voice was because she was concerned about how Delestre was going to react.

“He was going to be angry,” Bunnell told Veroni. “I was going to argue with him about my sister’s children. It’s not as easy as you think.”

Delestre was called by the defense yesterday not because he was expected to testify, but so Bunnell’s defense lawyer could introduce a videotaped interview that Woonsocket Detective Sgt. Todd Brien conducted with Delestre after T.J. was taken to the hospital.

On the videotape, Delestre, who was described by Roderick as slapping T.J. and hurling him across the living room, sought to minimize his role in the beating, telling Brien that after Bunnell left to drive the baby sitter home that night, T.J. accidentally fell downstairs.

The fall occurred, Delestre said, when he gave the boy a backhand slap.

The jury is expected to get the case today.

jcastell@projo.com