A graphic retelling of a ghastly murder

Swinging his arm back and forth, a prosecutor yesterday showed a Common Pleas jury how defendant Thomas Strode allegedly killed his girlfriend Asia Adams - a promising 21-year-old West Chester University student - in her Germantown home in 2004.

Strode and his best friend, Simeon Bozic, took a knife, put it to Adams' neck, and dug into it at least three times, Assistant District Attorney Carlos Vega said in his closing argument at Strode's murder trial.

"They started back and forth, and back and forth," Vega told the jury, as he swung his arm back and forth.

"If she's unconscious, she's jerking like crazy," he said. "If she's not unconscious, oh, the pain she must have felt!"

Strode, 28, of Germantown, also faces charges of arson, robbery, conspiracy and possession of an instrument of crime. After a weeklong trial, the jury is expected to begin deliberations Monday.

Authorities contend that sometime on Nov. 7, 2004, Strode and Bozic beat Adams with a shovel, then sliced her throat after forcing her to sit with her bottom half naked in a basement chair of her home on Seymour Street near Pulaski Avenue.

The next day, they returned to her house and carried her body to a second-floor bed, which they set on fire, authorities allege.

As part of his closing argument yesterday, Vega showed a photo of part of her body, burned and charred, on a projection screen.

He also had brought into court the shovel used to beat Adams and the orange-cushioned swivel chair on which Adams allegedly sat during the assault.

Standing behind the chair, Vega told the jury: "Here's the blood. . . . They hit her and they hit her again."

He grabbed the red-handled, rusted shovel sideways and held it with both hands. Facing the jurors, he told them: "Here's the blood."

During the trial before Judge Peter F. Rogers, the prosecution presented as evidence an alleged confession Strode gave to police and a string of witnesses, including one key witness - Bozic.

Bozic, 29, also of Germantown, already was tried in this case. He was convicted in November by a separate jury of first-degree murder, robbery, arson and conspiracy.

On Thursday, he testified as a prosecution witness against Strode. The prosecution also showed the jury a videotaped confession Bozic gave to homicide detectives on Nov. 15, 2004, in which he re-enacted how he and Strode allegedly had killed Adams.

Defense attorney J. Michael Farrell, in his closing argument yesterday, told the jury that it was Bozic alone who killed Adams.

Speaking in a raised voice, he contended that Bozic, who had spent part of the weekend before Adams' death with Adams and Strode, felt excluded from the relationship when he couldn't stay overnight at Adams' house.

In the early-morning hours of Nov. 7, while Strode and Adams were in her house, and while Bozic was forced to walk the streets, "something snapped in Simeon Bozic," Farrell said.

Bozic later killed Adams, but when he realized he left his cell phone in her basement, he decided out of jealousy, fear and rage to blame Strode, too, Farrell contended.

Farrell also contended that Strode gave a confession to a homicide detective only after he had been exhaustively questioned for six hours in an interrogation room, then was tricked into doing so.

Vega, in his closing argument, told jurors: "Would you confess to that horror? No."

He read parts of Strode's Nov. 16 statement to police. Asked why Adams was killed, Strode did not go into detail, but said: "It was basically starting with an argument about Simeon and me."

Vega then contended to the jury that Bozic and Strode were so close that "the way they cut her throat was almost like bride and groom cutting a wedding cake."

He alleged, without explicitly saying so, that the two men had a homosexual relationship and that Adams might have caught the two of them together.

Because of that, he contended, the two men killed her and did so in a humiliating way by removing her pants and exposing her vagina while they beat and disfigured her face. *