Gaudenzi trial moves forward to May 5
The murder trial of Lawrence Gaudenzi, 44, is now slated for May 5. In preparation for the advancing trial, nearly two-dozen pretrial motions were heard in a four-hour hearing on February 10 in Caroline Circuit Court.
Gaudenzi was arrested in Shenandoah County on May 16, 2008 and charged with the 1995 murder of his wife, Lisa Gaudenzi. The investigation has lasted more than 13 years.
In January 1995, Lisa Gaudenzi, was a young mother living in Ruther Glen with her husband and child when she disappeared, failing to report to officer training at Fort Lee. Her body has never been found.
When Gaudenzi was arrested in Shenandoah County in May 2008, he was living under the assumed name of Randy Lee Evans. Gaudenzi had also changed the name of the couple’s child to Evans.
During Tuesday’s hearing, Judge Horace Revercomb ruled that certain statements Gaudenzi made to the woman he married after Lisa disappeared were relevant and admissible. Gaudenzi’s wife, Linda May Thompson, lived with him for 12 years before his arrest in May of 2008.
According to courtroom statements by the prosecution, Gaudenzi allegedly told Thompson that he had killed the man whose name he had assumed, Randy Lee Evans. Thompson says that Gaudenzi told her that he shot Evans to death and cut up Evans’ body, burying the pieces in the marshy land that surrounded the Suffolk power plant in Suffolk County.
Thompson also alleges that Gaudenzi told her that he killed Lisa Gaudenzi in a scuffle on a stairway that resulted in Lisa falling to her death and that he later disposed of her body in the same manner as Evans’ body.
Caroline’s Commonwealth’s Attorney Tony Spencer said looking for remains in the hundreds of swampy acres surrounding the Suffolk power plant is “literally looking for a needle in a haystack.”
Defense attorneys for Gaudenzi motioned and received funding for their own human remains canine and handler to examine Gaudenzi’s former residence in Ruther Glen. Previously, two separate canine teams used in the murder investigation had indicated that human remains were once located in a basement closet in the home Gaudenzi used to share with his wife Lisa.
Gaudenzi is being held without bail at the Pamunkey Regional Jail in Hanover awaiting trial.
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