Self-defense or murder? Jurors hear differing versions as trial begins in Bolton killing

December 7, 2024 | By Alan J. Keays | VTDigger

A prosecutor described Joseph Ferlazzo as a cold-blooded killer who confessed to police that he shot and killed his wife, Emily Ferlazzo, in a camper they were staying in after traveling from New Hampshire to Vermont for the weekend in 2021 to mark their one-year wedding anniversary.

A defense attorney countered that Joseph Ferlazzo acted in self-defense, despite him making no such claim during an interrogation by authorities days after the killing.

Joseph Ferlazzo is arraigned via video on a charge of first-degree murder in Vermont Superior Court in Burlington on October 20, 2021. Accused of shooting his wife Emily, Ferlazzo is being held at the Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans. File photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

Jurors heard the competing versions of events from the two lawyers during the opening statements of the first-degree murder trial of Joseph Ferlazzo on Friday morning in Chittenden County Superior criminal court in Burlington.

Joseph Ferlazzo, 44, a tattoo artist from Northfield, New Hampshire, has been held in custody since his arrest in October 2021 in the death of his 22-year-old wife, who worked as a nurse.

According to charging documents, Joseph Ferlazzo shot Emily Ferlazzo twice while the couple were in parked in their camper van in Bolton, and then dismembered her body, leaving her remains in the camper.

Joseph Ferlazzo returned to New Hampshire after the weekend without his wife, the charging documents stated. Back in New Hampshire, Joseph Ferlazzo allegedly told his wife’s parents that following an argument the couple had in Bolton, she had told him she would be getting an Uber to go back to New Hampshire.

Chittenden County Deputy State’s Attorney Sally Adams, the prosecutor, said in her opening statement that on the night of the killing, Joseph Ferlazzo jumped on top of his wife while she was in bed in the camper, put a red pillow over her head, and shot her twice.
“The evidence will show that his wife, Emily Ferlazzo posed no threat to him,” Adams told the jurors. 

Joseph Ferlazzo then went to “great lengths” over the next several days prior to his arrest to cover-up the killing, the prosecutor said.

Adams said the couple had been arguing on the night of the fatal shooting. 

“Over the course of the evening, Mr. Ferlazzo and Emily started fighting,” the prosecutor said. “She told him she didn’t want to be with him.” 

Following the argument, Adams said, Emily Ferlazzo laid down on the bed as Joseph Ferlazzo “stayed up and stewed” and became “enraged” before he shot her in the head and killed her.

Adams told the jurors that during the trial, the prosecution would present a wide-range of evidence to prove its case, including testimony from several witnesses as well as videos and photographs.

Among the videos, Adams said, will be a recorded statement from Joseph Ferlazzo after he was questioned by authorities days after the killing. 

“You will hear Mr. Ferlazzo outline in great detail what led up to him shooting Emily,” Adams told jurors. 

“As you’re listening to his interview, I want you to listen closely to his own words,” the prosecutor said. “Mr. Ferlazzo will never say that Emily was a threat to him. He will never say that he thought Emily was going to kill him. He will never say that he was scared for his life.”

Margaret Jansch, a public defender representing Joseph Ferlazzo, told jurors Friday they would hear directly from her client about the killing itself and the events leading up to it.

“They had been refitting a camper to turn it into a residence, they actually had a name for it — Roaming Rosie — you will hear him testify,” Jansch said. “It was something they planned to go cross country up and down the East Coast.” 

They traveled to Vermont to celebrate their one-year anniversary and to spend time with his sister and her boyfriend, who had rented an Airbnb in Bolton, Jansch told jurors. Joseph and Emily Ferlazzo had parked their camper in the parking lot of the Airbnb, the defense attorney said.

Soon after the couple arrived in Vermont, Jansch said, they began arguing. That included a dispute over him lighting a candle that she said Emily Ferlazzo didn’t want lit, according to Jansch.

Eventually, Jansch said, Emily Ferlazzo got into bed in the camper. Joseph Ferlazzo went to join her there and the arguing continued and he picked up a pillow and threw it on her head.

“That’s when she said, ‘That’s it, you’re dead,’” Jansch said Emily Ferlazzo told her husband.

Emily Ferlazzo then pulled out a gun from under a pillow, the defense attorney said.

“He, of course, has his gun in his hand, that’s what these two people did, they believed they needed to sleep with their guns for self-protection,” Jansch said. 

“He already had his Glock in his hand, he saw her hand start to move out from under the pillow and he shot her — twice — and killed her,” Jansch said, adding, “After he shot her he really was in a state of panic and shock.”

He then “carried on” for the rest of the weekend as if nothing had happened, Jansch said, including having breakfast the next morning with his sister. All the while, the defense attorney said, Joseph Ferlazzo had provided various stories of why his wife was not with him.

“He will tell you that even now his memory of what happened is fragmented, coming to him in bits and pieces,” Jansch told the jurors.

“It is true,” the defense attorney added, “that he told the police nothing about what I just described to you and that it was weeks later that it began coming back in the form of nightmares — that he could see her pulling the gun out to shoot him.”

Jansch asked the jurors to find her client acted in self-defense and to acquit him of the first-degree murder charge.

“You, as finders of fact, will have to decide what you think is true and isn’t true,” she told the panel.

If convicted of the murder charge, Ferlazzo faces up to life in prison. 

The trial is expected to last about two weeks. 

This story was published first by VTDigger.org.