Town note
British colonists settled North Smithfield in the 17th century and developed it into a farming community named after Smithfield, London, England.
about 0:05:02The story
In November 1992 the chiropractor Francis Ramella took his wife and younger daughters to the Grand Cayman Islands for Thanksgiving week, leaving their 20-year-old son Trevor alone in the family house on Jefferson Road in North Smithfield, Rhode Island. Trevor, described as happy-go-lucky and reckless, threw a five-day party that began on Monday 23 November and grew each night. He carried a 22 calibre revolver around the gatherings, and guests thought little of it.
He was sent to California at 12, where his uncle Rick beat him and introduced him to meth.
She assumed he was talking.
On Friday 27 November, the final night, about 40 people were in the house. His friend Heath and another guest, Charles Meyer, persuaded him to put the gun away, and he put it in his bedroom bureau. Police cruisers were outside, so they hid in the woods. When the police left they knocked, and Trevor eventually let them stay the night after another guest, Brian Hareau, refused to drive them home.
Around midnight Charles Meyer heard noises upstairs and found the television off and the two teenagers gone. Trevor ran to his bedroom and shouted that his guns were gone: the 22 revolver and an old black powder rifle. Meyer locked the door, told William Bergeron and Trevor's girlfriend Allie Gerard, and armed himself with a shotgun. When the front window was smashed and voices came from the basement, the three fled out the back. The family's 1986 Toyota Celica was gone.
Trevor had a small bullet hole behind his left ear and had been beaten at least four and possibly six times with the rifle. His teeth were smashed, his jaw and cheekbones pulverised, and two teeth and a piece of facial skin were found on the sidewalk. The cause of death was the gunshot, fired from two or more feet away. His wallet lay seven feet away, emptied of money.
Holmes survived, drove to exit 90 and called 911, and was treated at Lawrence and Memorial Hospital. On 30 November they stopped in Indiana to ask directions; a police officer ran the plates, found the revolver under the seat, and they were held in a juvenile detention centre in Fort Wayne.
His defence was that he was too drunk to form intent; the prosecution brought in the Connecticut robbery four hours after the murder to show otherwise, and he had to take the stand.