FORT PIERCE — On a morning just over seven years ago, Joan Loughman was on the phone with her twin sister when she ended their call abruptly.

“She said, ‘I have to go, someone’s at the door,’” Assistant State Attorney Lynne Park told a group of jurors today.

Park said it was the last time anyone heard from Loughman before she was found bludgeoned to death and stripped of her jewelry inside her father’s house on Hutchinson Island south of Fort Pierce.

A jury in 2005 determined that Loughman’s death came at the hands of Michael Andrew Gosciminski, who wound up on Death Row for the crime. But a state court’s ruling last year overturning his conviction has led to a second trial, which began Friday, two days after the seventh anniversary of Loughman’s murder.

Park said Gosciminski, who in 2002 was a marketing director for the assisted care living facility Lyford Cove, met Loughman after she had arrived from Connecticut and made plans to move her 87-year-old father into the facility.

Park said Gosciminski murdered Loughman to steal her jewelry, namely a 2-carat diamond ring he gave to his girlfriend. Investigators said the girlfriend, Debra Thomas, told them she saw Gosciminski washing himself of blood after the murder.

When she asked him what happened, Park said, Gosciminski told her he’d “had to rough someone up,” and later that day he presented her with the ring that detectives and other witnesses later determined was identical to the one Loughman wore. Several weeks after Gosciminski’s arrest, detectives recovered more of Loughman’s jewelry at the former home of a married man with whom Gosciminski’s girlfriend was having an affair.

Gosciminski has maintained his innocence. His attorney, Assistant Public Defender Mark Harlee, said in his opening statements today that investigators failed to produce any physical evidence linking Gosciminski to the murder.

“For seven years now, he has lived in hell,” Harlee said. “It’s time for the truth now to come out.”

The Florida Supreme Court last year overturned Gosciminski’s conviction, saying the jury in the first trial was allowed to hear evidence about Gosciminski’s statements to Loughman and other details that should have been inadmissible.

His current trial is expected to last three weeks. If the jury seated today convicts him a second time on first-degree murder charges, Gosciminski could again face a death sentence.

Tags: death row, Joan Loughman, Michael Andrew Gosciminski, murder

This entry was posted on Friday, September 25th, 2009 at 7:20 pm and is filed under Courts, Crime, Hutchinson Island. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.