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Posted by: kwflatbed

By John Moss
Herald News Staff Reporter
Wed Mar 05, 2008, 07:36 PM EST

Fall River - A 26-year-old man was arrested Wednesday by police and charged with the city’s lone murder this year.
Rene Gosselin of 29 Blaine St. was arrested about 4 p.m. at the Police Department and charged with killing 47-year-old Frederick Thompkins.
Thompkins’ body was found in his third-floor apartment at 215 Whipple St. on Feb. 15.
Gosselin will be arraigned today at the Fall River District Court, 289 Rock Street.
District Attorney Samuel Sutter praised the cooperation and tenacity displayed by the Fall River Police Department, state police detectives assigned to his office and Assistant District Attorney Pat Bomberg, who helped coordinate the investigation.
“As I have said every time we have brought charges in a homicide, it is through the tremendous cooperation and skill of the local police department, our state police unit and my prosecutors, that we are able to achieve our goals,” Sutter said.
Gregg Miliote, director of communications for Sutter’s officer, said after the victim’s body was discovered that he may have been beaten, indicating that there appeared to be “some sort of blunt trauma.”
There was a report that the body was found after Fall River police and a fire department hazardous materials unit responded to a “foul odor” complaint.
That seemed to indicate that the victim may have been dead for several days in his apartment, one of 12 in the three-story tenement house.
No further information on the case was to be released until today’s arraignment, Miliote said Wednesday.

http://www.heraldnews.com/news/x633710478

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Posted by: kwflatbed

Murder suspect denied bail


By Omar Bradley


By Will Richmond
Herald News Staff Reporter
Thu Mar 06, 2008, 09:12 PM EST

Fall River - Despite the lack of a motive, Assistant District Attorney Pat Bomberg presented a mix of crime scene and circumstantial evidence that lead to the holding of a man in connection to the city’s first homicide of the year.
Rene Gosselin, 26, with addresses in Fall River and Tiverton, was held without bail on a murder charge by Judge Robert A. Welsh III following arguments from Bomberg and Gosselin’s attorney Edward L. Wells Jr. Gosselin is accused of killing Frederick P. Thompkins, 47, of 215 Whipple St., and is scheduled to appear in court on April 8 for a preliminary pretrial hearing.
Describing an investigation that would seem fit for the television show “CSI,” Bomberg told the court about a shoe print left in Thompkins’ bloody apartment and the subsequent work with the shoe company that led to the winnowing of suspects and charge against Gosselin. Bomberg also recalled testimony of connecting Thompkins’ cellular phone with a specific relay tower located near St. Anne’s Hospital only to have the calls stop a week before his body was found following calls that suddenly linked to towers in other parts of the city.
Gosselin, who was joined in the courtroom by a large group that included his mother, father, brother and girlfriend, is accused of beating Thompkins to death in early February. Thompkins’ body was not found until Feb. 15 after neighbors complained to the property owner about a foul odor emanating from his apartment. According to police reports, a medical examiner estimated the death occurred about a week before the body was discovered.
Bomberg told the court that investigators for the city and state police, through interviews with some 30 witnesses, learned Thompkins was a longtime drug dealer who escaped police detection by limiting access to his apartment to only those he knew and using a specific procedure for calling him.
Bomberg alleged that Gosselin had been running drugs for Thompkins and that an argument may have ensued between the two.
Bomberg said Gosselin and Thompkins were first connected through cell phone records. He said all of Thompkins calls went through the St. Anne’s Hospital tower until the days after police believe he was killed, when his calls started connecting to a tower on President Avenue near the Blaine Street apartment of Gosselin’s girlfriend.
Bomberg said attempts to locate Thompkins’ phone, even with cooperation from the service provider and GPS tracking, failed.
Inside Thompkins’ apartment, Bomberg said, police found Thompkin’s bludgeoned body near a living room sofa that had been moved away from a wall with blood splattered about and in some places puddling.
Among the items found in the apartment was a mangled pair of eye glasses with one of the lenses removed. Bomberg said police were able to tie the glasses to Gosselin by matching the prescription and style to an order Gosselin placed with a Wal-Mart in Dartmouth. They linked Gosselin to the Wal-Mart after reviewing his cell phone records and finding a 411 call that connected him to the store.
Bomberg also said police were able to match a bloody fingerprint on one of the lenses to Thompkins.
Police reports indicate that Gosselin said he had lost the glasses, possibly in Thompkins apartment, and had called Wal-Mart about the cost of a new pair and warranty information.
One puddle, Bomberg said, included the print of Vans brand shoe. Following consultation with officials from the company, Bomberg said, detectives learned the print matched a specific style called MacGyver’s and matched the tread print to a size 13 shoe.
In interviewing Gosselin, Bomberg said the suspect admitted to wearing that size shoe but that he hadn’t owned Vans for some time and that those shoes may have been a gift from two years ago. While police never located the shoes, they did find an empty Vans MacGyver shoe box containing personal effects in the basement at Gosselin’s girlfriend’s residence.
Vans officials told police the MacGuyver style only became available in the spring of 2007.
“I know this may be a circumstantial case, as I know it will be suggested to the court, but there’s a lot of circumstances,” Bomberg told Welsh.
Gosselin’s attorney, an admitted personal friend of the familysaid Gosselin was not a flight risk and had no criminal record, with the exception of a juvenile matter.
Outside of the courthouse, Wells said he was not aware of the information presented by Bomberg during the arraignment but contended Gosselin was not the type to commit such a crime.
“This is uncharacteristic of Mr. Gosselin,” Wells said. “I’ve known him for years and he’s a gentle soul. This has shocked the family. It’s shocked all of us.”
Family members and acquaintances of both men had no comment after the arraignment.

http://www.heraldnews.com/news/x1993295289

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