Trial begins for man charged in '02 killings

Michael Donovan, a promising 18-year-old senior and star athlete at Billerica Memorial High School, was wearing pajamas and slippers as he drove his older brother, Paul, from their Billerica home to the Courtyard Marriott parking lot in Lowell.

Prosecutors said Michael probably had no idea he was driving his 20-year-old brother, described as a drug dealer who was several thousand dollars in debt to his supplier, to meet the man suspected in their deaths for an exchange of 5 pounds of marijuana.

Police interviewed the defendant, Rene Ramos, who is now 29, in his Lowell home the morning after the Jan. 31, 2002, killings, but he was not charged with murder until 2006, when a witness changed the story he had initially told police. Ramos, who has pleaded not guilty to two counts of first-degree murder and illegal possession of a firearm, sat silently in Lowell Superior Court yesterday as lawyers delivered opening statements.

Paul Donovan, a cellphone salesman, had met Ramos a week before the shooting, and the two agreed to “discuss some business,’’ said Thomas O’Reilly, a prosecutor for the Middlesex district attorney.

“Rene Ramos shot those two, one bullet to each head, in a snowy parking lot,’’ O’Reilly said in his opening statement.

Paul Donovan was pronounced dead at the scene, and his younger brother died a few hours later at Lowell General Hospital.

Both O’Reilly and Michael Doolin, Ramos’s lawyer, agreed that the case was based largely on circumstantial evidence. While O’Reilly instructed the jury to put together pieces of a larger puzzle, Doolin emphasized the lack of hard evidence tying Ramos to the crime.

“There’s one thing that’s clear: There is no forensic evidence in this case,’’ he said. “And the reason is clear: Rene Ramos did not commit this crime.’’

O’Reilly said cellphone records show that Paul Donovan and Ramos had a cellphone conversation about 10 minutes before the shootings and that both calls were routed through the same cellphone tower, placing them in the same general area.

Doolin told the jury that the initial investigation was chaotic and mismanaged. He recommended they question the testimony of some witnesses expected to testify, specifically that of several drug dealers and their associates.

After opening statements, jurors boarded a bus and were taken to the parking lot where the brothers were shot. Back at the courtroom, they were shown photos from the crime scene.

Jurors heard testimony from two police officers and the emergency medical technician who treated Michael Donovan. As O’Reilly asked witnesses to describe the crime scene, Doolin challenged them for specific details from that night.

Officer Brian Kinney, who was the first to arrive and kept a log of those who entered the crime scene, and Sergeant John Sheehan, who followed the ambulance carrying Michael Donovan to the hospital, struggled to provide details such as when police officials arrived and who was in charge of the investigation.