James A Kimble
jkimble@eagletribune.com
September 26, 2008 08:10 am BRENTWOOD — Las Vegas contractor Joe Vrooman testified he cradled murder victim Jack Reid's head in his lap as John "Jay" Brooks swung at least two fatal blows to Reid's chest with a hammer. "One was a solid blow, one was a glancing blow. I watched those first two blows and turned my head and covered up Mr. Reid's head. I turned away," said Vrooman, 52. "I just looked away."¬ù Vrooman described Reid, 57, of Derry as still struggling to breathe just before the hammer blows, saying to Brooks, "He's still alive."¬ù Brooks, a 56-year-old multimillionaire, is on trial for capital murder. He allegedly responded to Vrooman's comment by picking up the hammer and saying, "Stop the heart, stop the bleeding," before striking Reid. Brooks long believed Reid, his former mover, had stolen a truckload of belongings he was hired to pack in a moving truck headed to Las Vegas. Police say there's no evidence Reid stole anything. Vrooman, who has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and hindering apprehension as part of a plea agreement, spent nearly six hours on the stand yesterday. He told jurors how he first met Brooks while working for his house-flipping venture in Las Vegas. Brooks had moved from Londonderry to start a new real estate business. His company was known as OLOS, for "One Life, One Speed." Vrooman said when Brooks first approached him about helping to murder Reid in June 2005, he suggested Brooks use his personal plane to avoid detection back in New Hampshire. That idea was quickly scrapped, he said. Other ideas were floated by co-defendants Michael Benton, 32, of Manchester and Robin Knight, 56, of North Hampton before Reid was killed on June 27, 2005, Vrooman said. "Mike Benton had mentioned some pretty graphic things," Vrooman said. "He wanted to cut his hands off, he wanted to cut his head off. I said to Mike, 'Remember, we don't want this messy.'" The group planned to use handcuffs Vrooman had acquired in a previous job as a security guard, but Knight ruled that out, Vrooman said. Dumping Reid's body in Saugus, Mass., was not part of the group's original plan, he said. "From what Jay said and what Robin said, Revere was a sort of mobster (hangout)," Vrooman said. "A lot of organized-crime killings were in that area so it would be a good place to dump a body, to just leave a car parked down the street and nobody would notice it for weeks maybe."¬ù It was only hours before the murder that the men conducted a "walk-through" of the Deerfield horse barn used for the killing. They had to figure out how they would restrain Reid so Brooks could confront him about the stolen items before he was killed, Vrooman said. "I told (Brooks), 'You know the stuff is gone. You're not going to get it back.' He agreed with me, but he still wanted Jack Reid to know he was doing this," Vrooman testified. If restraining Reid went awry, Brooks was ready to shoot Reid with a .22-caliber pistol, Vrooman said. "If it looked like any of us was going to get hurt, Jay was going to shoot him," he said. That gun was later tossed from a bridge near Brooks' waterfront condominium in New Castle after the murder. Defense lawyers remained mostly idle as Vrooman, a second star witness in the case, laid out a timeline that spanned Las Vegas and New Hampshire. They are expected to start questioning his version of events next week.
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