Leanne Roy spent the day cleaning, packing and preparing for her family to go on holiday at the end of June 2018. At around 11pm she fell asleep and drifted off after letting her puppies
Some time later he woke up with an unmistakable sound. Roy, who had spent years living in the woods, knew instantly that the blood-curdling scream came from a person, not an animal.
Roy lived next door to John Enright, whose daughter, Julia, was inside a tree house on Roy’s property that night. It was inside this treehouse that Julia Enright stabbed Brandon Chicklis to death on the night of June 23, 2018, a “surprise gift” for her boyfriend, Jonathan Lind.
Lind is now on trial more than six years after Chicklis’ death, accused of lying to a Worcester County grand jury. He faces a single count of perjury.
Roy took the stand Monday during the first day of testimony in Lind’s trial, recounting what he saw the day Chicklis died.
On the night of the murder, Roy said he saw a silver car parked in the driveway he shared with the Enrights, essentially right in front of their dining room door. It was strange, he said, to see a car parked in the driveway, the Enrights rarely, if ever, leaving things in the road.
During Enright’s trial, Roy testified that the sound of that scream still gave him goosebumps.
Enright will not testify during Lind’s trial, and prosecutors cannot tell jurors that she has been convicted of Chicklis’ murder. Yet he remains a central figure, because, as Worcester Assistant District Attorney Shayna Woodard told jurors during her opening statement, “it’s important for you to understand what happened that weekend, to understand how the defendant lied to the grand jury.”
“It’s not an easy lie to understand,” he told the 14-person panel. “He doesn’t say the sky is red when it’s blue.”
Instead, he argued, Lind withheld key information about his movements that June weekend to protect Enright, with whom he had a relationship even after his arrest in the Chicklis murder, and himself.
But Lind’s attorney, Kevin Larson, argued that his client could do nothing more than answer the questions being asked.
And Lind was not asked, “You helped Julia Enright kill Brandon Chicklis,” “You drove to Rindge, New Hampshire on June 23, 2018, to dispose of Brandon Chicklis’ body,” or anything like that, said his lawyer. .
If convicted of perjury, Lind faces up to 20 years in prison.