FRANKLIN, Va. (WAVY) — After seven and a half days of calling witness after witness, prosecutors rested their case against Wesley Hadsell Wednesday afternoon.
Hadsell is accused of killing his 18-year-old stepdaughter AJ back in 2015 when she was home from spring break.
The last witness for the commonwealth was Sgt. David Benjamin, the lead Norfolk homicide detective on AJ’s case. Benjamin has been called by the commonwealth multiple times since the trial started to testify to different aspects of the investigation.
On Wednesday, the detective talked about a police interrogation of Hadsell on March 20, 2015. Benjamin said during this interrogation, police presented Hadsell with the piles of evidence against him.
According to the detective, Hadsell’s responses were “It makes me look pretty [expletive] guilty,” and “It makes me look like I’m hiding something.”
At one point, Benjamin and Hadsell got into a philosophical conversation about guilt.
It was in this context, according to the detective, Hadsell said “People get caught up in emotion and do things they wouldn’t normally do and I understand that now.”
During the cross-examination, the defense showed home videos of Hadsell with his daughters in an attempt to humanize his client to the jury.
One video was of Hadsell and AJ doing the ice bucket challenge together.
The other videos were of Hadsell and his daughter Abby who was just 4 years old at the time. The two were at Chuck E. Cheese.
The Chuck E. Cheese videos were from the day before AJ disappeared.
The defense will start calling witnesses Thursday morning.