NORWICH _ While sitting in a bar in 2001, Peter Wlasiuk talked about how to murder someone and make it seem like a drowning, a Mount Upton woman testified Friday at Wlasiuk's murder retrial.
``He said it would be easy to kill someone and make it look like a drowning accident. You just have to be smart,'' Brenda Golden told Chenango County District Attorney Joseph McBride in county court.
At the time these remarks were made, she and Wlasiuk were sitting in The Pillars, a bar in Guilford, Golden testified.
``He told me, `Say I wanted to put someone in Guilford Lake. I'd get a bucket, fill it with water from the lake and drown them in that, then throw the body in the lake.'''
With this technique, an autopsy would reveal that the water in the victim's lungs came from the lake, leading officials to conclude the victim must have drowned there, she said Wlasiuk told her.
Her conversation with the defendant occurred sometime ``in the first four months'' of 2001, she told the eight-woman, four-man jury.
By late summer that year, Wlasiuk and his wife, Patricia Wlasiuk, bought The Pillars and renamed it the Angel Inn. And about a year after the alleged conversation, on April 3, 2002, her body was taken from Guilford Lake after what appeared to be a tragic accident and drowning.
McBride asked if Peter Wlasiuk seemed to be joking when he spoke of how to get away with murder.
``No, it wasn't really joking; it was straightforward,'' Golden said.
Wlasiuk's attorney, Randel Scharf of Cooperstown, asked if Golden had contacted the police in 2001. She said she hadn't, but after reading in the newspaper in 2002 that Patricia Wlasiuk had drowned, she recalled the unusual remarks.
She visited the lake and looked at the spot where the Wlasiuks' pickup truck had plunged down an embankment to the water, Golden testified.
Before she could contact police, however, they called for her and she told them what she'd heard.
Scharf asked her if she been drinking alcohol the night Wlasiuk spoke of murder and Golden said, ``No, I didn't. I was there because I had to follow my husband home.''
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Also testifying Friday was Kenneth Constable, owner of Ken's Car Care in Guilford. In the early morning of April 3, 2002, when Patricia Wlasiuk's body was taken from the water, Constable was the first person to try to revive her.
As he gave mouth-to-mouth respiration to the registered nurse, who worked at Sidney's The Hospital, ``I had the overwhelming taste of fresh beer,'' Constable said.
He noticed a bruise on her forehead as he tried unsuccessfully to revive her, he testified.
Minutes later, an EMT took over for him. Later, Constable, who'd arrived with a wrecker, helped remove the Wlasiuks' truck from the lake.
As the 1999 GMC dually pickup truck was winched onto the shore, Constable noted the doors were locked although the driver's side window was partly down, he testified.
Peter Wlasiuk has signed a statement that his wife was driving that early morning, that she swerved to miss a deer and that their truck veered into the lake. As water rushed into the cab, he got out but was unable to save her, according to his statement.
Previously, state police diver Jamie Bell testified that he found the victim's body in the water, not far from the truck.
Also in court Friday, Chenango County Sgt. Timothy Urnaitis, a diver, said that while searching in the lake four days after Patricia Wlasiuk died, he found her jacket on the lake bottom. When he took it to shore, he saw her license inside a pocket and photographed it.
Scharf noted that many other items, including keys and coins, were also in her jacket but were not photographed or inventoried as part of the evidence.
Also found that day was a large tool box that had come from the truck.
Urnaitis said he didn't know what was in the tool box or why it, and the items in the victim's jacket, were not included as evidence at the first trial in 2002.
At the conclusion of that trial, Wlasiuk was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years in prison, but in 2006, appellate judges overturned the conviction.
Broome County Judge Martin Smith is presiding at the retrial, which is scheduled to resume at 8:30 a.m. Monday.
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