NORTHAMPTON — A Greenfield man serving consecutive life sentences for the April 16, 2005, strangulation murder of Brandy Waryasz, a pregnant employee at a gas station on Routes 5 & 10 in Deerfield, is seeking a new trial because he claims a key witness lied during his 2007 trial.
Dennis M. Bateman was in Hampshire Superior Court on Thursday morning, represented by attorneys David Nathanson and Eva G. Jellison of Wood & Nathanson LLP of Boston.
Bateman, 54, was convicted on two counts of murder and sentenced in May 2007 to consecutive life terms for killing Waryasz and her unborn baby. He was sentenced to an additional 30 to 35 years for armed robbery.
Judge John Agostini, who presided over Bateman’s trial in Franklin Superior Court 12 years ago, oversaw the evidentiary hearing but did not reach a decision Thursday on holding a new trial, or whether more information should be presented.
At the hearing, a focus was on an affidavit signed by ex-convict Victor Marquez in 2017, in which Marquez claims that prosecutors compelled jailhouse informant Anthony Bogacz to take the stand and lie about Bateman.
Bogacz had testified at Bateman’s 2007 trial that, while both he and Bateman were being held in Franklin County Jail awaiting trial, Bateman said he killed Waryasz accidentally when she would not go along with a fake robbery.
“(Bogacz) was telling me he was going to get a deal because he was looking at a lot of time for doing drugs,” Marquez said in court Thursday.
But First Assistant District Attorney Steven Gagne questioned when Marquez had these conversations with Bogacz, and whether those occurred before, after or during Bateman’s trial. Marquez responded that he couldn’t recall when those conversations occurred.
In addition, Gagne observed that Marquez had only mentioned those conversations with Bogacz, and signed the affidavit, in 2017, following his arrest related to a domestic incident in Montague.
“You did nothing about that for several years,” Gagne said.
“I’m no snitch,” Marquez said. “I’m not a cop. I don’t go looking for people to let them know what’s going on.”
Gagne’s questioning also elicited responses from Marquez indicating that he has little respect for law enforcement, and has a specific dislike for the female district attorney who prosecuted Bateman. Marquez said he couldn’t identify her by name or appearance.
The question of Bogacz’s truthfulness was brought up during the original trial by Bateman’s defense attorney, Robert Jubinville.
In news coverage of the trial, though, prosecutor Elizabeth Dunphy Farris demonstrated to the jury that, in order to get the deal he was offered, Bogacz had agreed to tell the truth on the stand. Bogacz also told the jury that no rewards or promises were made to him at the time he made his first statement to police.
In a written appeal last August, Nathanson argues that Bateman deserves a new trial.
“The informants testifying to Bateman’s confessions were not worthy of belief and legitimate third-party culprits existed,” Nathanson wrote. “New information, information not disclosed, false evidence at trial, and evidence trial counsel failed to employ subverted the jurors’ task to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Beyond arguing that the prosecution was responsible for creating a “market” for information against Bateman, Nathanson wrote that another person should have been investigated for the murders.
At the trial, the jury determined that Waryasz, whose body was found with a black nylon strap tied tightly around her neck, was killed by Bateman, whom prosecutors described as a crack cocaine addict and career thief. The jurors reached the conclusion after several witnesses said Bateman was at the gas station shortly before the murder, and his DNA was also found in large amounts on the nylon strap and under Waryasz’s fingernails from where she had apparently tried to fight him off.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.