Accompanied by Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney Michael N. Herring and his chief deputy, Matthew Geary, Trelka led the panel through each picture, describing each blow, each cut, each stab and every burn that he found when he conducted his postmortem examinations of Bryan, Kathryn, Stella and Ruby Harvey.
Bryan Harvey, said Trelka, who was bound with electrical cords and gagged, died from blunt force trauma to the head brought about by six blows struck by a claw hammer.
“One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six!“ Geary counted out loud, holding the murder weapon in his right hand with a surgical glove on, striking his bare left hand.
The next set of pictures showed Kathryn Harvey’s death.
She, too, had been bound, but with clear packing tape. Her neck had been cut three times, but not fatally. She had been stabbed once in the back. And, Trelka said, she had been struck at least a dozen times on the head.
Geary then took out the hammer, and counted.
When the pictures of Ruby Harvey were unveiled, several jurors, already uncomfortable by what they had seen, recoiled. They turned their heads briefly, or put their hands over their mouths. One woman juror fought to control her emotions as tears welled in her eyes.
Forewarned of the nature of what would be presented this morning, several female relatives and women attending the trial in support of the Harveys were not in the courtroom.
Ruby, who was 4 years old and 36 pounds, had been bound. Trelka said his examination found pink and green nail polish on her fingers. She had been stabbed through the throat and in the back, and died of a combination of those wounds and blunt force trauma to the head.
Stella, 9, had also been bound and gagged. Trelka said he found six cuts to her neck and one severe stab wound that went through her throat to her esophagus. She had also been severely beaten on her head. Trelka told Herring that she died of a combination of the blunt-force injury to her head and smoke inhalation from the fire that had been set in the house.
Herring asked how Trelka determined Stella could have died from the fire, which Gray has admitted to setting after he and alleged accomplice Ray Dandridge robbed the house and brutalized the Harveys.
Trelka told the court that he had found soot in Stella’s lungs.
“She was breathing,“ he said.

In the statement, Gray told the detective how he and Ray Dandridge and Ashley Baskerville were just driving around South Richmond.
“We was looking for a house to rob—clothes, money jewelry,“ he said in the statement, read aloud in court this afternoon by Peterman.
Gray explained how they saw an open door at 812 W. 31st St., the home of the Harveys.
Dandridge (who is to be tried Sept. 18 in the deaths of Ashley Baskerville and her parents) and Gray entered.
Gray first tied up Bryan Harvey in the basement, using extension cords. Then he tied up the rest of the family—Kathryn, Ruby and then Stella, who had just arrived home from a sleepover, in clear plastic tape.
He told them that he would not be able to leave the house unless everybody was tied up. But what followed was more than a robbery.
“Now that I think about it, it was a real nasty scene,“ Gray said.
While Dandridge was upstairs taking items, “I started cutting their throats,“ Gray told Peterman, remarking at one point that his victims began getting up. That’s when he picked up the claw hammer and started beating them.
“All I know is nobody was moving when I got out of there,“ he told Peterman.
Gray’s statement ended this way:
“None of this was necessary.“

(This blog entry was filed by Paige Akin Mudd and Jim Nolan)

Inside the boxes were two claw hammers (Items 10 & 11), a broken knife blade (Item 41), a broken wine bottle and neck (Items 52 & 53), and (Item #42) what appeared to be a child’s blue winter scarf, with blood stains.
Former Richmond Police Department Forensics Detective Jeff Dwyer methodically opened each box at the instruction of prosecutor Matthew Geary, donning blue surgical gloves to remove each piece of evidence.
Dwyer also walked the panel through three exhibits of graphic photos of the Harvey crime scene in the basement of their home, including pictures of the bound, slashed and beaten bodies of Bryan, Kathryn, Stella and Ruby.
The photos were kept out of eyesight of the Harvey family and friends, who buried their heads in their hands and shed quiet tears into tissues. Gray, clad in a white buttoned-down shirt buttoned to the top, did not appear to react to the display, which was presented out of his view as well.

Jurors also kept their composure, though throughout the gruesome presentation, one man on the panel appeared flushed and emotional. He was one of several jurors who during questioning yesterday, postulated that he thought life in prison was a harsher penalty for murder than the death penalty.

Earlier this morning, Richmond firefighters described entering the Harvey home. Amid the thick black smoke from the fire, they removed the bodies of Kathryn and Ruby Harvey and placed them next to a flower bed outside before realizing they had been bound and slashed. The bodies of Bryan and Stella Harvey were recovered later from the basement.
Testimony in the prosecution’s case is to resume about 1:15.

Bruns recounted Gray’s arrest in the West Philadelphia row house of his father, noting that despite repeated requests by police to keep his hands up, Gray kept lowering one of his arms.
“Did Ricky Gray want to die that day,“ Bruns asked. “Only he knows for sure. We can never be certain.“
Bruns said Gray was prepared to take responsibility for what had happened and told the police the truth in Philadelphia.
“He made no excuses then and he’ll make none now,“ the lawyer said, speaking as the picture of the Harvey family remained on the tripod before the jury.
The lawyer seemed to be positioning the panel toward the penalty phase of the trial, when, if there were a conviction, the jurors would decide whether Gray would receive life in prison or the death penalty.
“It isn’t what happened,“ he told the jurors.“... It’s what you’re going to do about it.“
But he warned the jurors to “develop a coping strategy” to handle the graphic evidence that is likely to follow in the case and could “overpower” the emotions of panelists.

Speaking sometimes at barely more than a whisper, Geary slowly explained who they were—Bryan, the musician,  Kathryn, the business owner, Stella, a third-grader at Fox Elementary School, Ruby a preschooler.
They lived happily in a brick house at 812 W. 31st St. until New Year’s morning, “when this man . . . walked into the Harveys’  life,“ Geary said, pointing at Gray, seated just a few feet away.
“Very soon thereafter, they would all be dead.“
Geary calmly explained how Gray, according to police, found an open door at the Harvey home and entered, then systematically tied up the family in the basement. Bryan who had been reading the paper in the living room, was hog-tied with extension cords. Kathryn, who had been preparing food for a party later that day, was eventually bound with clear tape, as was Ruby, who had been playing elsewhere in the house, and Stella, who was taken down to the basement when she returned from a sleepover.
The prosecutor explained how Gray decided to rob the family, taking, among other things, a computer and even some cookies that were sitting in a basket.
He also took Bryan Harvey’s wedding ring.
Geary said Gray first stabbed the family members, trying to cut their throats. When they wouldn’t die, Geary said, Gray started using a claw hammer to strike them on the head.
The details left spectators in the courtroom and family members of the Harvey’s flushed and verging on tears.