SPRINGFIELD — With closing arguments expected today in the trial of a former Westfield police detective accused of shooting his wife, the defense has offered the jury the premise that Amy Fanion wasn’t murdered but committed suicide.
On March 17, Brian Fanion’s defense attorney Jeffrey Brown called several witnesses to continue hammering that point home.
As state and city police officers began arriving at the Fanion home on May 8, 2018, after being alerted Amy Fanion had been shot, they initially thought she had committed suicide, based on what her husband and their fellow officer, Westfield Police Detective Brian Fanion, told them.
However, as State Police investigators arrived at the North Road home in Westfield’s Wyben neighborhood and began examining Amy Fanion’s body and the fatal wound, investigators began to have questions.
They had suspicions that Brian Fanion may have pulled the trigger because they couldn’t find evidence typically associated with a self-inflicted gunshot to the head.
During an investigation that unfolded over 20 months, investigators also learned that Brian Fanion was having a romance with another woman in the months before the shooting, and that there had been friction between the couple over their plans once he retired from the Westfield Police after 34 years in July 2018.
He was formally charged in November 2019 with first-degree murder but has maintained since the shooting that his wife shot herself in a rage over the argument they were having about his upcoming retirement.
The state medical examiner who performed Amy Fanion’s autopsy ruled her manner of death — either homicide or suicide — as inconclusive.
Investigators examining the fatal wound could see no evidence typically associated with a self-inflicted wound to the side of the head: The bullet entered Amy Fanion’s head just above her right ear and exited her left cheek at a slight downward angle.
Investigators noted there was no soot; or stippling, which is burned and unburned gunpowder that creates a tattoo-like appearance on the skin around the wound; or a stellate or star-shaped pattern of torn skin around the wound; or burnt or blown away hair.
With that lack of evidence, the state has suggested Brian Fanion shot his wife from at least a foot away, and maybe from as far away as 18 inches while she was sitting down at their dining room table for lunch.
Brown has called experts in blood pattern analysis as witnesses to testify that the lack of gunshot wound evidence doesn’t rule out that Amy Fanion committed suicide.
Those experts also testified about how even in a close- or loose-contact gunshot wound, there is not always evidence of what is called “back spatter.”
Back spatter occurs in a gunshot wound when the gases escaping from the muzzle with the bullet create a cavity just below the skin and as the cavity closes — it happens in a fraction of a second — it blows blood, tissue, skin and bone back toward the gun’s muzzle.
There was no back spatter detected on the gun, but the gun did have blood on it.
Testimony has indicated that Amy Fanion’s brother, who arrived at the Fanion home within, perhaps, a minute of the shooting, touched her before picking the gun up to make sure his brother-in-law didn’t get any ideas about possibility shooting himself.
On March 17, Jennifer Preisig, a state crime lab technician, confirmed earlier testimony by a blood pattern analyst called by Brown that because of the variable factors involved in shootings, like the angle of muzzle to target and the presence of hair or clothing in the bullet’s path, there is no way to predict when back spatter will occur and why it wasn’t created.
Hampden County Assistant District Attorney Mary Sandstrom has argued that the lack of back spatter shows the gun was fired from a distance of at least a foot away from the victim’s head.
When Preisig was asked specifically by Brown about trying to determine the distance from which a gun was fired based on the presence, or lack, of back spatter, she confirmed that the lack of it cannot lead to any determination of distance.
Since his opening statement when the trial began on Feb. 20, Brown has queried witnesses called by the state about how Amy Fanion’s hair could have served as an “intermediate target.”
She had long, thick, wavy hair and parted it on the left side of her head with a large portion draped over the right side. Brown has argued that her thick hair served as an “intermediate target” that shielded her skin from the soot and stippling typical to a close-range gunshot.
Just where the gun was before the shooting has been a subject the prosecution and defense have sparred over.
The prosecution has suggested that Brian Fanion was wearing his gun when he excused himself to go to the bathroom the day of the shooting, and has questioned several witnesses about the protocols expected from police officers when carrying their guns.
Each has testified that officers must always have their department-issue weapons in their full control, even at home.
However, when Westfield Police Officer Michael Csekovsky was questioned by Brown on March 17, he told jurors about an encounter he had with Brian Fanion at the Fanion home minutes after the shooting.
Csekovsky testified that Brian Fanion told him he had put his weapon down to go the bathroom and when he walked out and into the dining room, Amy Fanion picked it up and fired.
Brian Fanion also told Csekovsky that he couldn’t stop her.
In earlier testimony provided by police officials who arrived at the home after the shooting, they said Brian Fanion told them he lunged at Amy Fanion in the seconds before she fired, nearly catching her as she fell, fatally wounded.
Csekovsky also testified that Brian Fanion told him that he had been arguing with his wife for three days prior to the shooting, confirming earlier testimony about the friction between the couple about their plans after Brian retired from the police force.
And Brian Fanion told Csekovsky this, less than an hour after the shooting.
“If she had thought about what she was doing, she would have never done it,” Csekovsky testified.
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