ALFRED — A third witness who initially told police he saw Kelly Gorham alive on the evening of Aug. 8, 2007 – several hours after police say she was already killed and buried by her ex-fiancee Jason Twardus – is on the witness stand this morning at Twardus’ murder trial.

Garth Steffens testified he believed the woman he saw was indeed Gorham, a 30-year-old nursing student from Alfred.

“At that time, I was damn sure that was her,” Steffens said.

But Steffens now believes it was not Gorham.

“My opinion has changed,” Steffens said. “It seems much more likely that it could have been somebody else.”

He said his opinion changed because he spent a lot more time at the property of his boss John Durfee, where the sighting occurred, after Gorham’s disappearance. Steffens said a lot of young women come and go from the property, where there is a horse barn and a firewood business.

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Gorham lived in an apartment on the property. Durfee and his wife lived in the main house, and Calvin DeGreenia lived in a pool house there in the summer of 2007. Durfee and DeGreenia, who had just recently struck up a romance with Gorham, have already testified that they had dinner and drinks with her on the night of Aug. 7, 2007. Gorham’s supervisor reported her missing the next day when she failed to show up to work at Maine Medical Center in Portland.

Gorham had been engaged to Twardus, but she broke it off and he moved out of her apartment a few months before she disappeared. Prosecutors say he arrived at the apartment and strangled her to death on the morning of Aug. 8, 2007. Twardus is accused of burying the body on a remote tract of land owned by his father in northern New Hampshire.

DeGreenia, Durfee and Steffens initially claimed to have seen Gorham getting into a red car with a man late in the day on Aug. 8, 2007. They all testified this week that they were mistaken.

Defense lawyer Daniel Lilley has suggested the men changed their story about the sighting after finding out that Maine State Police detectives believed Twardus had killed and buried Gorham by noontime on Aug. 8.

 


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