Prosecution: Estranged boyfriend threatened to kill Malden hairdresser
(AP photo/Josh London, Pool)
Lesly Cheremond pleaded not guilty to a first-degree murder charge today in Malden District Court.
By John R. Ellement and Andrew Ryan, Globe Staff
A Malden hairdresser who was found smothered to death in the trunk of a car had been threatened by her estranged boyfriend a week before she disappeared, a prosecutor said today in court.
The estranged boyfriend, Lesly Cheremond, confronted Norma Dorce Gilles on Feb. 8 when she was with her new boyfriend, said Elizabeth Keeley, an assistant Middlesex district attorney.
“You know what happens to people who mess with families,” Cheremond said, according to Keeley. “They get killed.”
Cheremond pleaded not guilty to a first-degree murder charge today in Malden District Court and was held without bail. Gilles went missing Feb. 14, and police found her body Wednesday in her car, which was parked a few blocks from her salon.
“She was smothered,” Keeley said today in court. “There was pressure placed over her nose and her mouth.”
Defense attorney James Budreau argued that the prosecution’s case was circumstantial and lack hard forensic evidence. Budreau said that his client moved seven years ago to the United States from Haiti and has been gainfully employed.
Prosecutors allege that Cheremond has been caught in incriminating lies. He claimed to have no access to the car in which Gilles’s body was found, Keeley said. However, police found a set of keys to the car when they searched his music and DVD shop, Super Star Lesly C Music Productions, which is next door to the Salem Street hair salon.
The couple broke up in February 2007 after he allegedly assaulted her. Gilles sought a domestic violence restraining order against Cheremond, who was charged with aggravated assault and assault with a dangerous weapon. His trial on those charges is scheduled to start April 29.
Gilles's older brother, Jules Dorce, was one of 20 friends and relatives who came today to court. Dorce said he would wait patiently for justice for his sister. He said had long feared this would happen, but he had hopped to protect her.
“That’s what I was trying to do, to protect her,” Dorce said. “But I was too late.”
