[Watch coverage of the trial on the Law&Crime Network with live in-studio analysis in the player above. For a raw feed of the trial, watch in the player below this article.]
George Burch is testifying in a Wisconsin courtroom on Wednesday in the trial where he is charged with first-degree murder for the death of Nicole VanderHeyden in May 2016. Burch and VanderHeyden allegedly met that same evening, but he insists that he didn’t do it. Watch live in the player above.
Burch has admitted that he was with VanderHeyden on the night she died. He claimed he was having sex with her in a car, which explains why investigators found his DNA on her body. Burch claims that her boyfriend, Douglass Detrie, found them, then killed the woman and threatened Burch at gunpoint, making him move the body to the spot where investigators later found her.
Detrie had been arrested on suspicion of being behind his girlfriend’s death, but police eventually released him. Authorities then turned to Burch, eventually arresting him and charging him with the murder.
Early in the trial, Detrie took the stand and claimed that he didn’t know exactly what happened to his girlfriend that night. He said he was out drinking with friends and received some angry texts from her, but didn’t see her. He said that after going to another bar where he thought she might have been, she wasn’t there. He and a friend later looked for her, but couldn’t find her, he said, and then he went home.
On Tuesday, however, babysitter Dallas Kennedy told the court that in the days after VanderHeyden’s death, she asked Detrie what happened, and he told her that she had hit her head before walking home on the night in question.
Now, the court will get to hear Burch’s version of the story.
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