The prosecution has rested its case on day three of the rape trial of former prosecutor and one-time “most eligible bachelor” Gary Zerola.
Prosecutors rested their case at the opening of Thursday’s session immediately after the jury was seated.
Zerola, 51, who served as a prosecutor in both Essex and Suffolk counties before becoming a defense attorney, has pleaded not guilty to accusations that he raped a 23-year-old woman in 2016.
On the first day of the trial at Suffolk Superior Court in Boston, which began on Tuesday, prosecutors first called Jacqueline Hurley, a bartender at the former Four Winds in Boston, who testified that she had served drinks to the party of four the night of Nov. 9, 2016.
That party included Zerola; Colleen Daley, the esthetician he had once represented in court and later began a “sexual relationship” with; a man named Jonathan Plaut, Zerola’s friend who he was at a concert with before they came to the Four Winds together and the owner of the Back Bay apartment where the alleged rape occurred early the next morning; and the alleged victim herself, a 23-year-old esthetician who worked with Daley.
The next witness was the alleged victim herself, who testified that Zerola had been kissing on her all that night, much to her chagrin, and that she never consented to his alleged advances, first with his fingers and then through full penetration on the L-shaped couch in the apartment at around 7 a.m. on Nov. 10, 2016. Defense attorney Joseph Korwski Jr. would get her to concede that she herself had kissed Zerola that night, as well, when he played a SnapChat video of the moment in court.
Zerola is represented by Krowski and Rosemary Scapicchio.
Tom Brant, one of the prosecutors along with Ian Polumbaum, described the incident and summarized her later testimony in his opening statement Tuesday.
“On the morning of Nov. 10, 2016, at a little before 7 a.m. (the victim), 23 years old, was asleep in a place she had never been before, an apartment she had never been before, on a couch she had never been on before. She didn’t wake up from an alarm, she didn’t wake up from a noise, what she awoke to was the defendant, Gary Zerola,” Brant said, before describing the alleged act of rape.
“She looked at him as she awoke and said, ‘What are you doing?,’” Brant continued, adding that Zerola said nothing but continued and escalated the alleged assault, even as the victim repeated, “‘What are you doing? What the (expletive) are you doing?!’”
Day two saw testimony from Daley, who testified to heavy drinking that night, and that while she couldn’t remember much from that night because of the intoxication — and because being on the stand was “very stressful” — she did remember that the alleged victim shook her awake on that couch shortly after the alleged crime occurred and demanded that they leave.
She would also testify that the alleged victim, as they walked to Zerola’s car to be dropped off, grabbed her by the arm and whispered that Zerola had tried to “hook up” with her earlier that morning.
Krowksi hammered back that Daley’s testimony had been extremely inconsistent and, he said, unfairly “selective” in that she seemed to remember only moments that put his client in a bad light. The exchange was intense and at one point Daley could be seen wiping tears from her eyes.
Wednesday also saw testimony from Sharon Italiane, the registered nurse who performed the rape kit on the alleged victim and testified to bruising and minor abrasions on the alleged victim. Boston Police Department Det. Michael Ross who was one of the detectives who first interviewed Daley during their investigation also testified.
Zerola was a criminal defense attorney ahead of these charges. He also spent a year as a prosecutor in the Essex DA’s office and two months as a prosecutor in the Suffolk DA’s office, according to the Suffolk DA’s office.
Once dubbed Boston’s most eligible bachelor by People magazine in 2001 and named a finalist for ABC’s first season of “The Bachelor,” Zerola also has a pending charge accusing him of rape from 2021. He pleaded not guilty on that charge after he was indicted.
A little before 10:50 a.m., after calling only one witness, the defense rested. Zerola, who had indicated to a news producer on Wednesday that he might take the stand on Thursday, did not testify in his defense.
This is a developing story.
