YOUNGSTOWN — The last prosecution witness in the Robert L. Moore aggravated murder trial Tuesday was retired Stark County Sheriff’s detective Rick Perez, whose testimony revealed the content of the confession Moore gave to Perez in July 1993 in the killing of Virginia Lecorchick, 23, near Berlin Lake.

Moore, 52, went to prison for 15 years after pleading guilty in Stark County to involuntary manslaughter in Lecorchick’s death.

He’s on trial now in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court for the June 3, 2009, disappearance and presumed killing of Glenna J. White, 16, of Smith Township.

After Moore left prison in the Lecorchick killing, White was at a home on Alden Avenue in Smith Township near Alliance late June 2, 2009. Moore and others also were there. Prosecutors have alleged that White awakened others in the house with the allegation that Moore had touched her inappropriately or tried to rape her.

Moore took White in a car from the home and returned more than an hour later with blood on his clothing, prosecutors have alleged. Her body has never been found.

Testimony ended Tuesday, and the jury deliberated on Moore’s fate about two hours before breaking for the day. Deliberations will resume today.

1993 KILLING

Assistant Prosecutor Mike Yacovone questioned Perez about law enforcement finding Lecorchick’s body July 10, 1993. Perez, who investigated 100 homicides in his 37-year career, said she “appeared to have been severely beaten around the face and shoulders.”

The next day, Moore, then 23 and of Alliance, turned himself in to Alliance police, which led Moore to speak with Perez and Moore confessing to the killing.

A manuscript was produced of the interview Moore gave, and Yacovone and Perez read the questions and answers to the jury so they could hear what the interview sounded like.

Moore told Perez, “I killed that lady over by the lake” after meeting her at the Town Tavern in Alliance. Both were drinking.

Then Moore asked her, “Do you want to go to the lake?” And she said “Yeah.”

Moore drove her in his van to the lake. His father-in-law, Jim, was asleep in the back of the van.

“We were just standing outside of the van and I asked if she wanted to have sex with me, and she said no. I said why not, and she took off running,” Moore said, according to the transcript.

Moore caught up to her, and then “I just jumped on her and started hitting her,” Moore said. Lecorchick told Moore she was “calling the cops or something,” Moore said. They started fighting. He knocked her to the ground.

“I must have knocked her out the first time I hit her, I don’t know,” Moore said.

“After that I just exploded, you know,” Moore said, following that up with “Went crazy. I can’t explain it.” He also said he placed a log on Lecorchick’s body in the water.

He told Perez that he went home that night and burned his clothes.

Though Moore’s attorney, Jeffrey Haupt, had asked Judge Maureen Sweeney to prevent prosecutors from presenting evidence regarding Moore’s conviction in the Lecorchick killing, the judge allowed the testimony.

CLOSINGS

In closing arguments, Yacovone told jurors that the testimony of Erica Teis, a young woman who was at the Alden Avenue home at the time Moore left with White, shows that Moore killed White purposely.

Teis testified that “I tried to go with Robert. He wouldn’t let me. He said ‘stay back.'”

“What’s that show? It shows he has a plan,” Yacovone said.

After Perez’s testimony, Moore’s attorney presented two witnesses, one of whom was Joni Yedler of Sebring, who said she saw White sometime in the fall of 2009. She said she lived near White and was friends with her.

Yedler, who testified by video, said she told Elizabeth White, Glenna’s mother that she had seen the teen near Alliance High School, where Yedler went to pick up her stepbrother and stepsister.

Yedler said Glenna White “said she was going home at night to get fresh clothes” and slept there and then left before her mom got up. Yedler said she did not realize at the time that she was missing. She said she told Elizabeth White about seeing Glenna, but police never spoke to Yedler about it at the time.

Rob Andrews, an assistant county prosecutor, cross examined Yedler, asking her if she knew other people who were among the teen’s best friends, and Yedler said she did not.

Andrews then asked Yedler if she knows someone named Chad Britton, and she replied, “I believe I remember Chad.” Yedler did not know where she knew him from, possibly from school.

Later in a Yacovone’s closing argument, Andrews told the jury that Britton is an employee of the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation who testified earlier in the trial.

“Chad Britton is the blood guy from BCI,” Yacovone told jurors. “She doesn’t know any of these people.”

Yacovone said it’s not possible that White is still alive.

“Ladies and gentlemen, she is dead. As painful as it is for the family to hear, she’s dead,” he said.

Haupt, meanwhile told jurors during closing arguments there is room for “reasonable doubt” as to whether Moore killed her.

“You have not been provided with the body. You have not been provided a cause of death. You have not been provided a crime scene. Reasonable doubt,” Haupt said. “The fact that they are not even giving you a cause of death is reasonable doubt in and of itself.”

erunyan@vindy.com