RutlandHerald.com - We Are Vermont

Murder charge in stabbing

A Clarendon man accused of fatally stabbing his lover's estranged husband reportedly told witnesses that he knew he would be punished for what he had done.

"He said 'I'm sure I'm going to hell. I'm sure,'" said Joe Hauser, whose wife Penny administered CPR to victim Kerry Munger before paramedics arrived Monday afternoon at the Diamond Run Mall lot.

Neither Penny Hauser nor surgeons at Rutland Regional Medical Center could save the 52-year-old Benson man, who died at the hospital.

[See more photos at http://rutlandherald.com/stabbing]

Trevor Herrick, 34, who never tried to flee the parking lot in Rutland Town and who dialed 911 himself, allegedly confessed to state police that he stabbed Munger during a heated argument over an affair he was having with the older man's wife.

He was later charged with second-degree murder in Munger's death.

Police said the fatal confrontation stemmed from a long-standing dispute over a relationship between Herrick and Munger's estranged wife.

Munger tried calling Herrick at his workplace earlier Monday but didn't reach him. When Herrick called back later, the two men agreed to meet at the mall to talk about Munger's wife.

State Police Detective Sgt. Albert Abdelnour said Monday night that the mall parking lot wasn't chosen randomly — two years ago Munger found Herrick and his wife together there. Abdelnour, who interviewed Herrick, said the Clarendon man confessed to police in part because "he felt bad about what he did."

Abdelnour said Herrick told police that he "had a bad feeling" about the meeting and brought a small hunting knife with him as a precautionary measure. The detective said that Munger had no weapons on him or in his pickup.

During the meeting, Herrick said he and Munger argued heatedly face to face. Police said Herrick began pointing his finger in Munger's face prompting the older man to push Herrick's hand away. It was at that point that Herrick told police he pulled the blade from a sheath on his belt and stabbed Munger in the back more than once.

Hauser said he and his wife were more than 100 feet away when the stabbing took place. His wife saw Munger strike his head as he fell to the ground. Unsure of what they were seeing, Hauser said he and his wife watched Herrick get back in his truck and then lean out the window to talk to the dying man on the ground.

When Hauser and his wife drove over to the two men whose trucks were parked close together, Hauser said Herrick tried to warn him away.

"He said 'You better go away. This is not pretty,'" Hauser said.

Despite the warning, Hauser said his wife, a retired nurse, rushed to aid the wounded man while Herrick watched from his truck.

Herrick was taken to the Rutland jail after his arrest. He was ordered held without bail Monday night and will be arraigned today in Rutland District Court.

An autopsy will be performed on Munger today at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Burlington.

At the crime scene Monday afternoon, police cordoned off a broad swath of the parking lot with yellow tape, and there were several state police cruisers as well as Rutland County Sheriff's Department cruisers at the scene. However, only a handful of curious people approached the scene on foot with a few more making slow drive-bys to check out the scene.

Inside the taped off area, police wearing blue gloves took measurements and collected forensic evidence from an area between two parked pickup where a pool of blood could be seen.

While the crime took place at the busy mall, the parking lot where the two men met was in the far southern parking lot behind Sears — a sparsely used area that is remote compared to the other parking areas at the mall.

Many customers at the mall weren't even aware of the incident and many who did see the scene didn't know what they were looking at.

"We saw it, but I thought the police were doing motorcycle training or something," said Kim Bullard who arrived at the mall more than an hour after police arrived.

When she found out police were investigating a homicide, she said she was shocked.

"To find out it was a fatal stabbing in the middle of the day was disturbing," she said.

Sears employee Nathan Bosch said he was disturbed too because the stabbing wasn't the first of its kind he's been close to.

A former manager at a store at the downtown Rutland Shopping Plaza, Bosch walked by a crime scene in the Walmart parking lot in late 2007 where Rutland man Jonathan Bruno allegedly stabbed John Baptie to death.

"People are crazy in this area," he said. "The biggest issue for me is there's fear out there now."

brent.curtis@rutlandherald.com