FORT PIERCE — Joan Loughman’s daughter Karen Stillman was four months pregnant in September 2002 when she told her mother she’d soon find out whether she was having a boy or a girl.

The two talked excitedly about the possibilities, and Stillman promised to call her mother as soon as she found out.

Her doctor’s appointment was September 25. On September 24, Loughman’s was found brutally murdered – beaten, stabbed and robbed of her jewelry at her father’s house on Hutchinson Island just south of Fort Pierce.

“I told my mother I was having a girl the night of her wake, speaking to her closed casket,” Stillman said.

Stillman told the story this morning seated just several feet away from Andrew Michael Gosciminski, the man a jury convicted Wednesday in his second trial for Loughman’s murder.

More than half of the jurors listening to Stillman’s testimony this morning were in tears by the time she stepped down, some sobbing heavily into their hands or folded tissues. The panel today is listening to evidence before deciding whether to recommend Gosciminski serve life in prison or get the death penalty for Loughman’s murder.

One of the two men on the jury immediately after Stillman testified asked Circuit Judge Robert Belanger if the panel could take a break, a request Belanger granted.

Loughman was murdered the morning before she was supposed to return to Connecticut after coming to Florida to move her father into Lyford Cove, the assisted-living facility where Gosciminski worked as a marketing director.

Gosciminski’s then-girlfriend Debra Thomas told investigators she saw Gosciminski washing himself of blood hours after the murder, and that day he gave her a 2-carat diamond ring she and other witnesses later said matched the one Loughman wore when she was murdered.

Loughman’s other jewelry was later found in a Geoffrey Beene bag at the home of Ben Thomas, a married man who Debra Thomas was also dating.

Gosciminski first went to trial in 2005. A jury back then convicted him of murder and voted 9-3 in favor of the death penalty, but the Florida Supreme Court later overturned the conviction and death sentence after it ruled that the first jury had heard details that should have been inadmissible in court.

Gosciminski’s second trial in the case, which lasted nearly two weeks, ended Wednesday when a new jury returned a guilty verdict at 11 p.m. after eight hours of deliberations.

Assistant State Attorney Chris Taylor, who along with Assistant State Attorney Lynn Park prosecuted Gosciminski, said he was pleased with the verdict.

“I was extremely happy for the family, who has had to go through this twice,” Taylor said of the verdict. “I’m extremely happy that justice has been done once again.”

Before Stillman testified, jurors heard testimony from her sister, Nancy Joan Loughman Hilliard, and Loughman’s husband Tom.

Tom Loughman described his wife as his best friend and the love of his life, a woman who was not only the matriarch of her family but a mentor to others in the community through nearly three decades of work as a volunteer for the Girl Scouts.

“There was nothing better on a Wednesday afternoon than to come home to Joan and our grandson,” he said.

After her murder, Tom Loughman said, the sadness of coming back to an empty house was so difficult to bear that he eventually took an early retirement.

Hilliard told jurors that her mother’s death has left her heartbroken. She and Stillman both talked about having to one day tell their children about how their grandmother was murdered.

“It’s a pain that no one should ever have to feel,” Hilliard said. “I still need my mom. My children still need their grandmother.”

Jurors this afternoon were listening to testimony from Dr. Michael Riordan, who told jurors that Gosciminski felt he lacked emotional support from his parents as a child, Gosciminski was diagnosed with a personality disorder in the late 1970s and was a suicide risk.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 8th, 2009 at 2:16 pm and is filed under Stuart. 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.