Warning: This post contains graphic descriptions of evidence from a violent crime.

Today in the ongoing murder trial of Gary Lee Bullock, jurors were presented with fingerprint evidence that placed the accused in the same room as the beaten body of Father Eric Freed, and photos of the crime scene that revealed the brutality of the crimes in question.

Bullock has been charged with torturing and killing the late priest of Eureka’s St. Bernard Catholic Parish on New Year’s Day, 2014. 

In morning testimony, former Eureka Police Department Senior Detective Todd Wilcox described a large amount of evidence, including photos taken at the crime scene and physical pieces of evidence that had been gathered, analyzed, placed inside evidence bags and brought into the courtroom.

Among the physical evidence presented today was a large iron pipe, painted white and flaking with rust, that Bullock allegedly broke off the outside wall of the church rectory and used in the commission of his crimes. Wilcox also showed the jury broken pieces of wooden landscaping stakes that were allegedly used to beat Father Freed in his upstairs living quarters inside the rectory. 

Yesterday jurors watched security camera footage showing Bullock milling around the church property and acting erratically over the course of several hours on the night of the murder. Part of the footage showed Bullock pulling landscaping stakes out of the ground near the church’s bathrooms and later running into the rectory with one.

The most disturbing evidence presented in the case thus far came in the form of crime scene photographs of Father Freed’s body on the rectory floor. Before displaying these photos on a flatscreen TV for the jury, District Attorney Investigator Martin Perrone and prosecuting Deputy District Attorney Andrew Isaac walked into the audience portion of the courtroom to warn family and friends of Freed who have been watching the trial.

The body had been wrapped in bedding, which was then soaked with Glenlivet scotch. A charred calendar was found on top of the body and an extinguished cigar was nearby. Another extinguished cigar was found near a lit gas burner in the kitchen. Bullock has also been charged with two counts of attempted arson.

The first few photos of Freed’s body showed it covered in the bedding. Wilcox explained that officers slowly unwrapped the body, taking pictures as they did so. A close-up photo of Freed’s battered and bloody face drew a quiet gasp from one woman in the courtroom, and as the graphic photos continued another woman began to cry.

Close-ups showed that chunks of a wooden stake were embedded in the flesh of Freed’s legs, and a powdery material such as rust — presumably from the iron drainpipe — was scattered on his belly. Blood spatter was found on a nearby door, wall and wainscoting, and bloody smears were identified on various objects found near the body, including a desktop tape dispenser,  a pilsner glass with the round base broken off and the wooden handle of a La-Z-Boy-style recliner.

Blood was also found in the adjacent bathroom — on the plastic package of wet wipes underneath some bars of soap and inside the shower stall.

Near Freed’s bruised and bloody arms was a plastic security bag with a hand-written label reading “St. Bernard’s vigil mass New Year’s Eve,” Wilcox testified.

Pieces of Freed’s cell phone were found in various rooms of the rectory. The long pipe was recovered from a storage room adjacent to Freed’s personal living space, and there were marks on a sheetrock wall in the room that matched the round end of the pipe, Wilcox said.

While security camera footage all but proved that Bullock had broken into the rectory, there had yet to be any testimony directly tying him to the carnage discovered inside — until today. Wilcox testified that a fingerprint found on a tumbler glass in Freed’s room came back as a match for Bullock, as did a print pulled from an empty whisky bottle.

Throughout this testimony Bullock sat facing forward toward Judge John Feeney, his reactions obscured from those in the courtroom behind him.

DA Investigator John Burke testified next, telling the courtroom that he’d listened to about 70 hours of conversations between Bullock and his friends and family, recorded either from the jail phone system or the jail’s visiting room. Of those 70 hours Burke pulled only about five minutes, from four separate conversations, to play for the jury. 

The first audio clip came from a Jan. 7, 2014, jail phone conversation Bullock had with his grandma (a portion of which was played during an evidentiary hearing late last month). On the recording, Bullock, sounding like a boy begging for permission to have a sleepover, pleads with his grandmother to put her house up as collateral for his $1.2 million bail.

“I need to be bailed out,” he says in a high pitched voice.

“No!” she responds. “I will not lose my house over your drug use.”

He insists that he’s not doing that anymore.

“You killed somebody!” she interjects.

“No I didn’t,” he responds. “Let me tell you what happened.” He goes on to tell her she’s the only hope he has, that he loves her and needs to get out to prepare for his court case, but she still refuses to put up her house as collateral.

In a Feb. 16, 2014, phone conversation with his mother and stepfather, Carol and John Bruno, Bullock alludes to the seriousness of the charges he’s facing, saying, “There are things that would scare the shit out of you.”

And in a call the following August — a portion of which was played during Isaac’s opening argument — Bullock tells his mom that he’s going to prison for the rest of his life. His mom tries to argue with him but he jumps in: “You haven’t seen the video, have you? They’ve got video of me going inside the house. They’ve got me dead to rights.”

In afternoon testimony a number of different law enforcement officers described evidence found away from the scene of the crime, including a collection of Freed’s belongings that had been thrown off the Miranda Bridge and Freed’s stolen Nissan Maxima, which was recovered from the Bruno property outside Redway. Clothing that Bullock wore on the night of the murder was also recovered from the Bruno property. 

Isaac told the court that he plans to call expert witnesses when the case resumes Thursday morning at 8:30 a.m.

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