By Joel Anderson, Times Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
BROOKSVILLE — From across the courtroom, mother and son briefly locked tear-filled eyes.
Robert Jardin struggled to maintain the gaze, dabbing a paper towel at his face and shaking his head as Janice Link took the witness stand.
His mother then clasped her hands in front of her face, cleared her throat and told jurors about all of the terrible things she had done to Jardin as a baby.
When it was all over and Link was preparing to leave the courtroom, she could manage to say only one thing to her son, now a convicted murderer.
"I'm sorry," Link whispered to Jardin, who burst into tears again, never looking up to acknowledge her.
In the sentencing phase of Jardin's double-murder trial Wednesday morning, jurors were bombarded with poignant statements from the grandchildren of the slain elderly couple — Patrick DePalma, 84, and his wife, Evelyn, 79, of Masaryktown — and riveting testimony about Jardin's troubled childhood and adolescence.
The 12-person jury found Jardin guilty Tuesday in the October 2006 stabbing deaths of the DePalmas.
Jardin, 35, of Brooksville, was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder, one count of robbery, one count of burglary of an occupied dwelling and one count of grand theft.
With the conviction, Jardin faces the possibility of the death penalty. Jurors, based on evidence and testimony, will recommend either life in prison or death by lethal injection.
The DePalmas' granddaughter, Sonsee Sanders, an elementary-school teacher from Brooksville, was the first witness Wednesday, reading a pair of prepared statements to jurors — one written by her, the other from another granddaughter who lives out of town.
Sanders told the jury about life growing up with her grandparents, a working-class couple who moved from New Jersey 25 years ago to a home on a secluded 10-acre lot near the Hernando-Pasco county line. They came to Masaryktown to live out their final peaceful years.
She described a childhood spent enjoying large Italian meals on weekends, playing card games and resting under the large oak trees that dot the DePalmas' property.
"The beautiful property that was to serve as family land has now become the place of the worst nightmare that anyone could imagine," Sanders said. "There was plenty of space for our family to build our homes on, but we cannot do that now because of the horrible reminders of what took place there."
Later in the hearing, Janice Link and her sister-in-law, Roseanna Link, told of the troubled childhood years of Jardin, Janice's oldest son, whom they referred to as Bobby.
Roseanna Link told the jury that Jardin's mother sometimes physically abused him and rarely, if ever, showed much affection toward him as an infant and child. She described one incident when Janice Link hung 5-year-old Robert upside down from a doorknob, bound his hands together behind his back and tied his feet together for not tying his shoes promptly.
"His face was as red as a red apple, and he had snot coming down his face," Roseanna Link said. "It was just awful."
Janice Link, who gave birth to Robert when she was 18, admitted to jurors that authorities in New York took custody of her son when he was only 3 days old because of allegations of physical abuse. She didn't regain custody until about four months later.
"The bond wasn't there," she said. "When we finally got him back, all he did was cry. I didn't know what was wrong with him."
A clinical psychologist from Tampa testified that Jardin's traumatic childhood almost certainly played a role in the troubles he experienced as an adult, including drug abuse, a penchant for brawling and even a dishonorable discharge from the Marine Corps in 1997.
"These are all significant factors," psychologist Peter Bursten told jurors. "Even before his birth, there were a lot of variables in place to create some very negative early life experiences."
Joel Anderson can be reached at joelanderson@sptimes.com or (352) 754-6120. You can follow Joel on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jandersontimes.