Cellphone records put Smith at scenes of Gouverneur, Rossie murders

Nov. 12—CANTON — GPS coordinates tracked through cellphone data place defendant Adam W. Smith at the scene of both homicides he is accused of committing in February and March 2023.

Meanwhile, the prosecution is nearing the end of its case and is preparing to call a final two witnesses starting on Wednesday.

Smith, 48, is accused in a 14-count indictment of killing 72-year-old Ronald E. "Huck" Durham on Feb. 11, 2023, in East Riverside Cemetery, Gouverneur. It also charges him with killing 67-year-old William M. Freeman, Willy or Bill to those close to him, in Freeman's Rossie home on March 1, 2023.

Smith is represented by attorney Brian P. Barrett of Lake Placid. The prosecutors are District Attorney Gary M. Pasqua and assistant district attorneys Alexander Nichols, Sasha Mascarenhas and Matthew Peabody.

Taking the witness stand Tuesday morning to testify on Smith's cellphone records was Michael Campbell, who works for the North Country Crime Analysis Center in Malone. A former state police investigator, Campbell said part of his job includes making maps based on cellphone data provided by law enforcement.

Using latitude and longitude data that Smith's AT&T phone logged on Feb. 11 and March 1, 2023, Campbell was able to map out Smith's movements on both days. He was also able to map movements of Durham's cellphone, which a passerby found on Gouverneur's West Main Street bridge three days after his death.

According to Campbell's map, Smith's phone was "likely within 50 meters" of the coordinates of East Riverside Cemetery on Feb. 11 from 3:56 to 4:33 a.m. Two minutes later, Campbell testified, the data shows Smith's phone had moved to near the McDonald's in downtown Gouverneur.

The map shows Smith's phone moving along a route that earlier testimony and video surveillance evidence showed Smith took in the hours after Durham was stabbed to death: north to the Ogdensburg Walmart, then south along Interstate 81 to Sandy Creek, on to Cicero, and then to Cortland, where police pulled Smith over and impounded his truck for having a suspended registration.

A second map Campbell made and testified to showed Smith's movements on March 1, 2023. Starting at 1:07 p.m., it shows his phone being "likely within 25 meters" of the latitude and longitude of Freeman's home. At 1:46 p.m., it puts Smith's phone as being "likely better than 50 meters" of the coordinates of a pull off area of Route 11, near the St. Lawrence-Jefferson County line, where a state trooper previously testified to finding Freeman's phone on the ground about 11 hours later.

At 2:59 p.m., the data puts Smith's phone within 25 meters of Blevins Ford in Gouverneur, where an earlier witness testified and photo evidence showed he tried to trade in Freeman's truck. The data then showed Smith's phone near his father's home in Lake Placid at about 5:14 p.m. Smith's father, George Smith, testified earlier during the trial and said Smith came to his house about that time on March 1, 2023, and asked him to hold on to two rifles. The guns later turned out to have been stolen from Freeman's home. George Smith turned them over after learning his son had been arrested, he testified.

The final data point puts Smith near the Circle K in Star Lake on Route 3. The store manager testified last week and said Smith tried to buy gas with two credit cards that were denied. They both turned out to be Freeman's.

A third map Campbell made and testified to showed the movements of Durham's phone on Feb. 11, 2023, tracked by its proximity to a Verizon cellphone tower, located in Gouverneur, within a 120-degree pie slice of the radius around the tower.

Campbell's map of that set of data showed Durham's phone being within a limited zone that includes his residence around 3:30 a.m. Feb. 11, 2023. From there, the phone shows up in a zone on that map that included the home of Eric Fisher at 3:44 a.m. Fisher, who testified earlier, was the last person to see Durham before he died.

Next, Durham's phone shows up in a zone on the map that includes the East Main Street Stewart's from 3:54 to 4:03 a.m. Durham drove there with Fisher and parked while Fisher went inside and bought coffee and cigarettes, according to earlier testimony and video evidence. Durham's phone shows back up in the zone that includes Fisher's residence at 4:09 a.m.

From 4:19 to 4:30 a.m., the map puts Durham's phone in a radial zone that includes East Riverside Cemetery. From there, the phone comes up in a zone that includes the west end of the West Main Street bridge. Campbell said the phone there pings over 1,300 times until 5:33 p.m. Feb. 14, after which it no longer shows up.

During cross examination, Barrett tried to raise reasonable doubt by emphasizing the estimated, rather than precise, distances shown in the phone records, especially the records from the Verizon tower that map zones rather than coordinates. He argued that, for example, with Durham's phone at the time it was in the cemetery, the device could have actually been anywhere within that limited area that includes the cemetery.

"Was Mr. Durham or his truck found anywhere else on that radius line ... he was found in East Riverside Cemetery?" Pasqua asked later on. "Correct," Campbell answered.

There were no records from Freeman's phone entered as evidence on Tuesday.

The trial continues at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday in St. Lawrence County Court with the final witnesses for the prosecution. Barrett declined to comment on who he may call for witnesses after the prosecution rests.