Man found guilty in murder-for-hire scheme

June 24, 2008 03:48 PM Email| Comments (0)| Text size – +

By Globe Staff

WOBURN -- A jury convicted a Waltham man this afternoon of hiring a hit man to kill his estranged wife's boyfriend in a Newton parking garage in 2006.

James Brescia was accused of hiring ex-convict Scott Foxworth to murder his wife's boyfriend, Edward Schiller, of Framingham. Prosecutors said that Brescia paid Foxworth $10,000 to kill Schiller. The insurance agent was found with a fatal gunshot wound to his head on Jan. 13, 2006, in a parking garage next to the Aronson Insurance Agency, where he worked.

Brescia was convicted this afternoon in Middlesex Superior Court of conspiracy and murder. Foxworth is charged with pulling the trigger and will be tried in October.

Prosecutors said Bescia was "obsessively jealous" and could not let his wife, Stacey, go, even after she filed for divorce in 2005.

The case against Brescia included cellphone records, primarily of calls between Foxworth and Brescia, bank records, and testimony from witnesses. Prosecutors said Brescia threatened to kill Schiller in several statements to one of his former co-workers at Raytheon and to his wife.

"It won't be good for Ed's health if he [keeps] seeing [her]," Brescia told Stacey, according to the prosecution's statement of facts.

Brescia was not in the courtroom when the verdict was announced. His attorney, J.W. Carney Jr., told reporters Brescia suffered a stroke and has been hospitalized.

Carney said he planned to ask for a new trial based on how Brescia's medical condition may have affected his testimony.

Carney said brain scans showed with "100 percent certainty" that Brescia suffered a stroke Thursday, after he had testified in his own defense. The following day, when he continued his testimony, he could not answer basic questions, Carney said.

Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.