DOVER, N.H. — Brigit Feeney walked a delicate line during the trial of a man accused of killing and raping University of New Hampshire sophomore Elizabeth “Lizzi” Marriott.
For nearly two years before the trial, she consoled Marriott’s family, kept them informed and helped them cope with the worst experience of their lives. Then, during 10 grueling days of graphic testimony, she worked to calm the killer’s distraught accomplice as the family looked on.
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Feeney, 26, is a victim-witness advocate, working with prosecutors and investigators from the outset of a crime. The goal is to get a conviction, and they often land between adversaries.
Marriott’s father, Bob Marriott, said after Seth Mazzaglia was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole that he was conflicted about the prosecution’s star witness, Kathryn “Kat” McDonough, who had lured his 19-year-old daughter to her death.
“I have a lot of reason to very much dislike her and her involvement in what happened to my daughter,” he said at the time. “I also have a lot of sympathy for the situation she was in and what she was put through by that person we just sent to jail.”
Speaking to The Associated Press last week, Marriott said he and his family fully supported Feeney’s focus on McDonough during her testimony and scathing cross-examination. Marriott, an engineer, called it the “logical” thing to do.
“Doing anything else is just increasing the chance Seth could walk away from it. That was unthinkable,” Marriott told the AP in his first public comments since Mazzaglia’s Aug. 14 sentencing. “She was a key part of the case. We wanted Brigit to support Kat, to provide an outlet for her and a friendly face.”
New Hampshire’s victim-witness advocates, unlike most of their peers nationwide, are on call around-the-clock and go to crime scenes alongside investigators and prosecutors. Since the program’s inception in 1987, the advocates have worked almost exclusively on homicides. Besides working with families and witnesses, they also gather information to identify the next of kin and, when necessary, arrange for crime scene cleanup.
Feeney even body-blocked camera crews to protect the family’s privacy.
“We get to know what their stressors are,” said Lynda Ruel, a victim advocate and director of the program. “We know what conversations to have with them in advance, so they are able to express how they’re feeling.”
Feeney, of Concord, graduated from Franklin Pierce University in 2010 with a degree in criminal justice and social work. She spent four years as an AmeriCorps victim assistance advocate, first with the Monadnock Center for Violence Prevention and the last two with the attorney general’s office, specializing in homicide cases.
“It’s about being able to help people through some of the most horrific things they could ever go through in their lives, to demystify the process so that they feel they have some control over what’s going on,” she said.
She was part of the team that told Lizzi Marriott’s family in October 2012 their only daughter had been killed. From then on, she was their confidante.
Marriott, of Westborough, Massachusetts, praised Feeney’s “ability to walk that line between a desperate father … and a legal case.”
During testimony, McDonough, 20, told the jury how she had lured her friend to the apartment as a sexual offering to appease an angry Mazzaglia, 31. When Marriott twice rejected his sexual advances, he strangled her and raped her lifeless body. The couple dumped her body off Portsmouth’s Peirce Island. It has not been recovered.
McDonough struck a deal with prosecutors and is serving 18 months to three years in prison for hindering prosecution and witness tampering.
It was Feeney who provided Lizzi’s parents with enough information to convince them that a plea deal in McDonough’s case was key to convicting Mazzaglia.
“Brigit was absolutely needed at that point,” Bob Marriott said. “We needed to come to grips with accepting a plea deal for this person we really feel is responsible for Lizzi’s death. … She enabled it.”
Marriott said Feeney was also invaluable when it came time to brief family members and close friends about the graphic, sexual testimony they would hear at trial. Marriott met with his wife’s family; Feeney met with his side of the family.
“We broke up the meeting three to four times,” Marriott said. “People just needed to walk away and say, ‘This is not real.”‘
At several points during testimony, McDonough was so upset that the judge recessed court until she could be calmed. Her lawyer, Andrew Cotrupi, credits Feeney for the support she gave McDonough, as well as small gestures like the bracelets she would leave at the witness stand that McDonough would twist to alleviate stress.
“She definitely helped her deal with her emotions and level of stress, young woman to young woman,” Cotrupi said.
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