NEWS

Hyde Park murder suspect wants police statements tossed

Sam Hemingway
Free Press Staff Writer

Lawyers for Jeanette Maxfield, the woman charged with killing her boyfriend at his Hyde Park home in February, say everything she told the police after the incident should be thrown out because investigators improperly forced her to talk to them.

"Police ... forced her to answer questions for several hours and rejected her requests to go home and stop the interrogation," stated a motion filed this week by Maxfield's attorneys at Vermont Superior Court in Hyde Park.

"Left with no other option, the defendant talked with the detectives only after police conveyed to her that doing so was a necessary precondition of her being able to leave," continued the motion, authored by lawyers David Sleigh and Kyle Hatt.

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Maxfield, 23, has been held without bail at Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington since pleading not guilty Feb. 18 to second-degree murder in connection with the stabbing death of Christopher Cafferky, 48, two days earlier.

According to police affidavits, Maxfield claimed she passed out on a couch at Cafferky's home after drinking heavily earlier in the day and woke up to find him dead on the floor and herself covered in blood.

Maxfield did not confess to the crime during questioning by police in the hours after the incident, according to court papers, but she did tell investigators she "assumed" she killed Cafferky because no one else was in the house at the time.

Maxfield also told police she was treated at the Brattleboro Retreat the previous year for a borderline personality disorder.

"It wasn't me," she is quoted in a police affidavit as telling investigators. "It was somebody else in my head. I wasn't there. I was asleep. ... I have multiple personalities. I was in a completely altered state, and I don't know how in an altered state I could just kill somebody and then just lay back and go to sleep."

Her lawyers' motion to suppress her statements acknowledges she was told she was "free to go" but that, when she asked to have someone call her parents, police responded that they were too busy to do so.

Later, after she said she wanted to go home, she was told by a Vermont State Police detective, "Well, you know you agreed that you would talk with us though, right?" the defense motion states, quoting from recordings police made after taking Maxfield into custody.

Lamoille County State's Attorney Joel Page has notified the court he opposes throwing out the police statements.

In an interview Wednesday, Page said his office plans to probe the issues raised by the defense before filing a more detailed response.

"In homicide cases, we take motions more seriously than in more routine cases," he said. "I do not think we know all the information about this issue yet. It would be premature to formulate a final position."

Contact Sam Hemingway at 660-1850 or shemingway@freepressmedia.com. Follow Sam on Twitter at www.twitter.com/SamuelHemingway.