GREENFIELD — The couple accused of killing 95-year-old Thomas A. Harty and leaving his wife for dead during an Oct. 5 home invasion in Orange pleaded innocent Thursday, but were held without bail while they await trial for a murder that prosecutors described as brutal and savage.
Joshua Hart, 24, and 28-year-old Brittany E. Smith, both of Athol, were arraigned in Franklin County Superior Court before Justice Mary-Lou Rup.
The two were originally charged in Orange District Court on Oct. 14 before being indicted by a Franklin Court grand jury in December.
Hart and Smith face charges of murder, attempted murder, two counts of home invasion, two counts of armed robbery, conspiracy, larceny over $250, motor vehicle theft, receiving stolen property and unauthorized use of a credit card. They were previously indicted on charges stemming from earlier incidents, including breaking and entering and larceny over $250.
If convicted of murder in the first degree, the defendants face a mandatory sentence of life in state prison without the possibility of parole.
Before the arraignments, which occurred separately, a court officer informed everyone in the room that outbursts would not be tolerated. The victims’ friends and relatives sat in near-silence in three rows behind the defendants’ table. Some scowled when they saw Hart and Smith and shook their heads when the charges were read aloud. Hart was ushered in wearing a white shirt and dark pants and Smith wore a white winter jacket over a red sweater. Neither made eye contact with the victims’ loved ones. Fisher’s son, Larry Fisher, spent most of the arraignments with his arms crossed.
Hart and Smith are scheduled for in-court pre-trial conferences at 2 p.m. on June 29.
Hart’s lawyer is court-appointed Brian Murphy and Smith is represented by court-appointed attorneys Bruce Green and Mary Anne Stramm, who had no comment for The Recorder after the proceedings.
Assistant District Attorney Jeremy Bucci is handling the prosecution and told reporters the attack was senseless.
“The allegations that have been brought before the court are that these two entered (the victims’) home and killed Thomas Harty and attempted to kill Joanna Fisher to avoid going to jail for relatively minor offenses and the fear of prosecution for other, uncharged offenses,” he said outside the courtroom.
Joanna Fisher, 77, died on Nov. 10. Bucci said the cause of the death has not yet been determined and it remains under investigation by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Fisher’s son said she died due to complications related to the injuries sustained during the home invasion.
According to a previous statement from Northwestern District Attorney David E. Sullivan, prosecutors allege the suspects wanted to steal Harty and Fisher’s vehicle to flee, because they had been arrested days earlier on car theft charges. Hart, who had warrants in his home state of Pennsylvania, wanted to avoid jail and Smith, a heroin addict, did not want to go to drug treatment, according to the district attorney. The suspects targeted a home with an older model vehicle that did not have tracking technology, according to the statement.
Prosecutors allege the suspects entered the victims’ home through a door off the garage and immediately began attacking the victims, who were watching television, around 7:30 p.m. on Oct 5. Fisher was struck in the head with a hard object and pushed out of her wheelchair, prosecutors allege.
Both victims were beaten and stabbed during the home invasion, which lasted approximately 30 minutes, according to Bucci’s motion to hold the defendants without bail. According to Bucci, Fisher told authorities her female attacker tried unsuccessfully to fatally cut her throat and asked the male attacker for help suffocating her, which also failed to kill her. Harty was suffocated with a pillow.
Prosecutors allege that following the attack, the suspects ransacked the home in search of money and then fled, taking the victims’ credit and debit cards and the keys to a Toyota Matrix.
According to the prosecutors, after the attackers fled, Fisher crawled to try to call for help, but the suspects had disabled the phone and had stolen Harty’s cell phone. Health care workers discovered Fisher when making a regularly scheduled visit at roughly 9 a.m. on Oct. 6 and called the authorities. Fisher described to police the appearance of her attackers before she was LifeFlighted to UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester.
A card stolen from Fisher was used to make a debit transaction at a Worcester-area Wal-Mart within hours of the attackers fleeing. They were captured on video surveillance shopping together and using the stolen debit card, and officers involved in the investigation recognized the man and woman as Hart and Smith, who also matched Fisher’s description.
According to prosecutors, Hart and Smith were apprehended in Virginia and admitted to authorities they had armed themselves before entering the the victims’ home at 581 East River St. Both said Hart murdered Harty and tried to help Smith kill Fisher, prosecutors said.
District Attorney Sullivan described Harty as a kind and generous World War II veteran. Fisher’s children have said their mother was involved with founding Valuing Our Children, an organization dedicated to addressing the needs of youngsters, the Pioneer Junior Women’s Club, and The Oracle, a now-defunct volunteer weekly newspaper in Orange.
According to court documents, a man called 911 on Oct. 2 to report that his mother-in-law’s vehicle, a 2006 Chevrolet Aveo, had possibly been stolen from King James Court in Orange. The mother-in-law, who is Smith’s great-grandmother, told Orange Officer Christopher Bisceglia she did not let anyone borrow it and had not seen it since 4 p.m. A neighbor told Bisceglia she saw Smith approach the vehicle around 4 p.m. and drive through the parking lot a short time later.
According to Bisceglia’s report, he called Smith and was told she did not have her great-grandmother’s vehicle. She said Jarmoul Corbin picked her up in King James Court in a red SUV at 2 p.m. The neighbor did not mention seeing any red SUV.
Smith’s mother told police her daughter is a heroin addict, according to the police report filed in the court record.
Officers visited Corbin’s apartment and Corbin granted officers permission to enter, after denying knowing where Hart and Smith were. Officers then found Hart and Smith in the apartment.
According to Bisceglia, Smith confessed to having tea with her great-grandmother at 3 p.m. and then taking the car keys without permission. She told police she picked up Hart and drove to Fitchburg to buy heroin, according to the police report. It was on their return home that Bisceglia called Smith. Hart and Smith decided to abandon the vehicle near an eatery in Gardner, Bisceglia reported. Gardner Police recovered the vehicle.
Hart admitted to knowing Smith took the car without permission and to driving it at one point, according to police.
After the murder, both were arrested without incident by the Rockbridge County Sheriff’s Department in Virginia when Rockbridge Sgt. Scottie Sorrells located the suspects in a U-Haul truck at the Rockbridge County Wal-Mart and took them into custody for being fugitives from justice on vehicle larceny warrants out of Massachusetts, according to the Sheriff’s Department. Harty and Fisher’s stolen vehicle was recovered in a different location in Virginia.
You can reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com
or 413-772-0261, ext. 258.
On Twitter: @DomenicPoli