Jessica Bosdell's nervousness faded into a sweet smile Tuesday as she sat on the witness stand and gazed at the last picture she took of her sister.
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Victim Tabitha Bosdell, right, is pictured holding her neice as Assistant District Attorney Ashley Wright, left in silhouette, questions Bosdell's sister, Jessica Bosdell, during the first day of the death penalty case against Reinaldo Rivera in Augusta Richmond County Superior Court at the Municipal Building on Tuesday, January 13, 2003.
Andrew Davis Tucker/Staff
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Defendant Reinaldo Rivera becomes emotional while his defense attorney Jacque Hawk outlines his history in his opening arguements during the first day of the death penalty case against Reinaldo Rivera in Augusta Richmond County Superior Court at the Municipal Building on Tuesday, January 13, 2003.
Andrew Davis Tucker/Staff
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The Richmond County Superior Court jurors sitting in judgment of Reinaldo Rivera also viewed the photograph of Tabitha Bosdell's smiling face as she held her chubby-cheeked baby niece.
About an hour after snapping that picture "the last day I saw her," Jessica Bosdell dropped 17-year-old Tabitha Bosdell off at the Huddle House on Washington Road at about noon June 29, 2000. Her sister planned to fill out an application for a waitress job and then walk down to FutureCall, where she worked as a telemarketer, Ms. Bosdell testified.
"When she left that interview she met a killer," Assistant District Attorney Ashley Wright said of Tabitha Bosdell in her opening statement.
The next photographs the jury saw showed what remained of the slender, dark-haired teenager - her bones scattered across a 120-foot area in Columbia County. Officers said they found the spot because Mr. Rivera, 40, drew a map of the site where he dumped her body after raping and killing her in Augusta.
Less than 24 hours after Army Sgt. Marni Glista bought groceries Sept. 4, 2000, her commanding officer went looking for her because she didn't show up for duty at Fort Gordon, Chief Warrant Officer Thomas Guley testified. At her Oakridge Drive home, he noted grocery bags inside her vehicle. He circled the house, seeing ceiling fans and lights on inside but no sign of activity, the soldier testified. He called the sheriff's office and followed a deputy inside the house.
"Oh my God," he heard the deputy say as he entered a bedroom. Sgt. Glista was lying on the floor at the foot of the bed. She was naked and her wrists were bound, he testified. The two things Chief Warrant Officer Guley said he won't forget are the gurgling noise she was making and the twitching of one index finger.
Rural Metro emergency medical technician Rhonda Barker testified she and her partner kept talking to Sgt. Glista because every time they touched her, Sgt. Glista would try to fight them even though she was barely alive. Ms. Barker said she cut the tape wrapped around the 21-year-old's neck and the tape that bound her wrists.
The tape struck her as odd, Ms. Barker testified.
"It was very neatly wrapped around her neck" and around her wrists - it was like handcuffs, she testified. It was odd because it was perfectly layered, as if someone had taken some time doing it.
They took Sgt. Glista to Doctors Hospital but there was nothing doctors could do to save her, the prosecutor told the jury in her opening statement. Sgt. Glista remained on life support until her family and her husband, a soldier shipped to Kuwait on Labor Day 2000, could see her one last time. She died Sept. 9.
Law enforcement didn't know who killed Sgt. Glista or that Tabitha Bosdell was dead until October 2000, after another young woman nearly died.
On Oct. 10, 2000, a 17-year-old Augusta girl woke up on the floor of her mother's bedroom lying in pools of her own blood, Ms. Wright told the jury.
"She did one thing those other four girls couldn't. She lived," Ms. Wright said.
The teenager gave investigators several crucial clues and helped with a sketch of her attacker. The published sketch and description of the attacker's car brought two witnesses to Richmond County sheriff's investigators. Both believed Mr. Rivera was the attacker, Ms. Wright said.
Mr. Rivera told investigators he couldn't believe the teenager he raped and tried to kill actually survived. He also told them about Sgt. Glista and Tabitha Bosdell, and about Tiffaney Wilson and Melissa Dingess, both 17 years old when - according to Mr. Rivera's statements - he raped and killed them in Aiken County in 1999.
As testimony began Tuesday in Richmond County Superior Court, where he faces 14 charges including murder in the death of Sgt. Glista, Mr. Rivera sat quietly behind his attorneys Peter Johnson and Jacque Hawk.
A member of the defense team slipped Mr. Rivera a tissue while Mr. Hawk gave his opening statement to the jury. He described a hard-working and successful man who couldn't control an obsession with sex that began when he was 6 years old and saw a picture of a naked woman tied to a tree. The child got a rope and went looking for a girl to tie up, Mr. Hawk said.
The obsession took over his life, led to the demise of a promising career in the Navy and brought financial ruin, Mr. Hawk said. But Mr. Rivera couldn't stop. He eventually tailored an approach to pick up women that often led to sexual encounters in the Augusta area, Mr. Hawk said.
But sometimes women saidno to Mr. Rivera and they were raped, the lawyer said. Mr. Rivera believed that if the victims lived to report the assaults, he would lose his family, Mr. Hawk said.
On Tuesday morning, Mr. Hawk asked the jury to consider not a verdict of innocence, but a verdict of guilty but mentally ill.
Such a verdict would not prevent the jury from imposing any of the three possible punishments if Mr. Rivera is convicted of murder - life in prison with or without the possibility of parole, or death.
Reach Sandy Hodson at (706) 823-3226 or sandy.hodson@augustachronicle.com.
