(There is a correction in the 15th paragraph)
Just days before the shooting of Lauren Kanarek, wheels were in motion to have her leave dressage trainer Michael Barisone’s farm, where testimony in his attempted murder trial revealed the atmosphere had become poisonous.
Kanarek, who came to Barisone for training in 2018 and lived in his farmhouse with her boyfriend, Robert Goodwin, had refused to depart his Hawthorne Hill stable in the Long Valley section of Washington Township when he asked her to leave. She had contended it was difficult to locate a stable that could take her five horses.
But Barisone’s lawyer, Steven Tarshis, had negotiated in July and early August with her father, Jonathan Kanarek, and found a comparable stable in the area that would take her, according to testimony today in Superior Court, Morristown, N.J.
“I believed we had an understanding,” said Tarshis, who was looking for a non-judicial way to get her to go elsewhere, though he noted Kanarek didn’t leave.
Michael Barisone’s personal attorney, Steve Tarshis. (Photo © 2022 by Nancy Jaffer)
On Aug. 5, a letter demanding she get off the property was delivered to Kanarek by email. She was served with a complaint, but it had never been filed.
“Michael did not want to start eviction, he wanted to scare her into leaving,” Tarshis said.
“So we suggested serving her with the papers, but not filing them, hoping this alone would give her the impetus to honor the agreement we thought we had.”
He mentioned the atmosphere at the farm was “getting worse and worse almost by the day,” and wondered how reports of personal private conversations he had with Barisone appeared on social media.There had been testimony about secret recordings earlier in the trial.
Seeing the conversations posted publicly “was really disturbing,” he said, noting the only way Kanarek could have heard them was to be in the room while they were talking, but she wasn’t.
Fate conspired against a solution when a caseworker from the state Division of Child Permancy and Protection arrived on Aug. 7, 2019, to talk to Barisone’s girlfriend at the time, Mary Haskens Gray, the mother of two.
Barisone went into his office, where the caseworker and Gray were meeting, and asked them to leave. The office was where he kept a 9mm Ruger pistol in the safe. Then he drove to the farmhouse and Kanarek wound up with two bullet holes in her chest.
During the trial, it was revealed that she had looked up the number for the division’s hotline on her phone, but it has not been made clear yet who notified the agency.
Yesterday, Morris County Supervising Assistant Prosecutor Christopher Schellhorn quoted firefighter/paramedic Daniel Vitale, who treated Barisone after he was involved in a struggle with Goodwin following the shooting. Vitale said Barisone told him, “Someone drove down my driveway and said she was going to take my kids. That’s all I remember.”
Washington Township Police Cpl. Thomas Falleni was questioned by Barisone’s lead attorney, Edward Bilinkas, as to how he collected information at the scene of the shooting.
He said he searched Barisone’s pick-up truck, but not other vehicles at the scene, and asked to have Barisone’s hands swabbed for gunshot residue, but said no residue testing was done on anyone. (This is a correction; the story previously said Barisone’s hands were swabbed.)
The corporal did not seize any video cameras, including one that had a view of the area where the shooting took place.
Several high-profile equestrians testified on the seventh day of the trial about how much Barisone had helped them in their careers, citing his coaching expertise, with some expressing concern about his condition as he agonized over the situation with Kanarek and Goodwin.
Allison Brock, coached by Barisone to a team bronze medal on the 2016 Olympic dressage team, was alerted by another professional equestrian, Jaime Dancer, that Barisone was “upset and distraught.”
Olympic dressage medalist Ali Brock was worried about her mentor, Michael Barisone. (Photo © 2022 by Nancy Jaffer)
Dancer said, “I thought he was going to kill himself.” She noted he had taken to pacing, like a horse that that is stressed.
When Brock heard from Dancer, she called Barisone, whom she had met in 2002 and considers a close friend.
“He was very quiet,” she said, noting that was “unlike Michael,” and discussed their conversation when he told her about the situation at his farm.
By the end of the phone call “he got more upset, sobbing hysterically,” Brock reported.
Eventing Olympic multi-medalist Phillip Dutton started working with Barisone on the dressage phase of his sport about the time of the 2012 London Olympics and a few years thereafter.
“All of my interactions with Michael were extremely honest,” said Dutton, calling him, “someone I could trust.”
There was a startling moment as his testimony ended, however, when Schellhorn brought up a 2011 fire caused by an electrical short in which six horses died at Dutton’s Pennsylvania farm.
“I’m sorry to ask you this question,” he said.
“Is it fair to say a barn fire can be dangerous for the horses?” he queried
“Absolutely,” Dutton replied.
Phillip Dutton testifying at the Barisone trial. (Photo © 2022 by Nancy Jaffer)
I wondered about the relevance of that query, but it could well be linked to earlier testimony that Goodwin had made an issue about the danger of a dryer that wouldn’t turn off in the Hawthorne Hill barn.
Another witness, Jordan Osborne, a working student for Barisone, was asked by another defense attorney Chris Deininger whether she ever felt threatened by Goodwin. The prosecution objected. Judge Stephen Taylor chastised the lawyer and told the jury the comment was stricken from the record.
Schellhorn asked the young woman whether her mother is Lara Osborne, and after getting an affirmative reply, said, “What’s the nature of her relationship with Michael Barisone?”
Osborne said, “They’re in a romantic relationship.” The defense objected, but was overruled.
Deininger then asked, “You swore under oath to tell the truth when you were brought here this morning. Would you violate that oath simply because of a relationship your mother was having?”
“Absolutely not,” she replied firmly.
Jordan Osborne said when Washington Township police came to the farm after being called as the facility became increasingly dysfunctional in the days before the shooting, they weren’t interested in doing anything about the situation. She described them as “very nonchalant. They turned around and walked away.”
Sean Cullen, a licensed professional counselor in psychology, met with Barisone Aug 9, two days after the shooting.
He testified about “a steady build of stressors in his life” that became acute in the days before the incident.
As Barisone discussed during their meeting what had been a volatile situation at his farm, Cullen recounted, the trainer said about his interaction with the police, “I kept telling them this was going to come to a boiling point.”