The boyfriend of shooting victim Lauren Kanarek continued being questioned by defense lawyer Edward Bilinkas today at dressage trainer Michael Barisone’s attempted murder trial in Morristown, N.J., which got under way Monday and will continue for at least another week.
Robert Goodwin, who often swiveled his chair back and forth during his time on the witness stand, was rather curt in answering some questions, alternating between seeming bored and annoyed. He had as much difficulty remembering things as his girlfriend experienced in the same chair the previous day, and he often needed to read transcripts to confirm his responses.
On pages where the type was small, Goodwin wound up borrowing Bilinkas’ eyeglasses so he could see, which made for an odd repeated interaction between the lawyer and the witness, who wore a sport coat and open-necked shirt.
Bilinkas asked Goodwin whether he got into an argument with farrier Arnie Gervasio on the morning of Aug. 7. 2019, the day of the shooting. First, Goodwin said he didn’t remember seeing the blacksmith at Barisone’s Hawthorne Hill farm in Long Valley, N.J.
Then he was given a text to jog his memory. Once he finished reading the transcript, he stated Gervasio had been scheduled to shoe Lauren’s horses, but Goodwin was informed Barisone had “told him not to shoe our horses anymore.”
When that happened, Bilinkas asked, “Did you make a physical threat to Michael Barisone?” Goodwin replied, “I do not recall, specifically.”
After Goodwin told Kanarek about the blacksmith situation Aug. 7, Bilinkas asked, “Did Lauren Kanarek tell you to `finish the bastard,’ meaning Michael Barisone?” Before Goodwin could reply, the prosecution raised an objection.
When Barisone arrived at the farmhouse for a confrontation that ended in bullets several hours later, Goodwin had been on the phone with his lawyer.
Firearms expert William Stitt in the courtroom with a photo of the Ruger used in the shooting of Lauren Kanarek.
“The purpose of an attorney was to continue to work at the original deal,” said Goodwin, referring to an arrangement under which Kanarek would pay $2,500 a month for board on two horses, the couple wouldn’t have to pay rent for their living quarters and Goodwin would do carpentry and repair work in the home and stables. But Goodwin also expected to be paid for those efforts, with various amounts of money mentioned in court.
“On the day of the shooting, the farmhouse was far from being completed,” noted Bilinkas.
As the lawyer observed, by Aug. 7, “everything had deteriorated to the point of no return.” The friction between Kanarek and Goodwin on the one hand and Barisone and his girlfriend, Mary Haskins Gray on the other, had reached a level of intensity that made the atmosphere at the farm toxic.
So when Barisone asked after he came to the farmhouse right before the shooting, “How can we work this out?” Goodwin responded that he had brought lawyers into it, “so lawyers can handle it.”
But Goodwin added, “in my mind, there was nothing to work out.”
Goodwin said he thought Barisone’s intention in coming and suggesting there could be a solution “was to pull us out of the house so he could shoot us.”
After Kanarek was shot twice, Goodwin “dove” into the house to escape a bullet aimed at him. It shattered a pane in a door, as the jury saw in a photo when a detective who specializes in crime scene analysis commented on the shell’s trajectory.
Goodwin and Kanarek then moved to restrain Barisone, with Goodwin punching him in the head while Kanarek reached to grab his gun hand. Goodwin put a chokehold on Barisone, who fell on the ground with Goodman on top of him, which is where the police found them when Kanarek, bleeding profusely, dialed 911.
She was transported to Morristown Medical Center, where she was attended to by Dr. Mark Widmann, a thoracic surgeon who said her injuries would have been fatal if not treated.
He noted that when he first saw Kanarek, the trauma service said her heart already had stopped once. Widmann clamped her aorta to raise her blood pressure and keep her alive. She had two sites of injury to the lung itself.
The shooting had also caused an injury to a breast implant, said the physician, who removed that item. Kanarek was on a ventilator for eight or 10 days during her 19-day stay in the Intensive Care Unit, he said.
During today’s proceedings, Superior Court Judge Stephen Taylor threatened to close the courtroom to the public if whispering in the gallery didn’t stop. He explained he’s worried about distracting the jury, which due to Covid restrictions is not confined to the jury box. Rather, several rows of the courtroom are filled with the juror overflow, so members of the panel can be socially distanced.
Keeping a firm hand on the proceedings, he already mandated the shutdown of chat rooms on internet sites livestreaming the testimony.
Morris County Supervising Assistant Prosecutor Christopher Schellhorn is planning to wrap up his case Monday, with Bilinkas starting Barisone’s defense later that day. He is pursing an insanity and self-defense strategy. There has been much discussion about recordings of conversations at the farm with devices owned by Goodwin and Kanarek. Expect the importance of those to come into clearer focus as the case proceeds next week.
