With Baskerville and the Tuckers bound at the hands and feet with duct tape, prosecutors say, a robbery turned into a gruesome triple murder.
In his opening statements, Chief Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Matthew Geary calmly and methodically told jurors that Dandridge, 28,  wound strips of duct tape around the heads of the helpless couple and Baskerville, beginning the process of suffocation that took approximately six minutes.
“He wrapped and wrapped and wrapped and wrapped, over and over and over again,“ said Geary, demonstrating the act to the jury using his own roll of tape on a cardboard cylinder.
“He killed them. He killed all three of them with duct tape,“ Geary added.
At that moment, several members of the Tucker and Baskerville family seated rushed out of the courtroom.
In similarly understated tones, Dandridge defense attorney Claire Cardwell told jurors in her opening statement that what happend on Jan. 6 was horrible.
“Nothing we do or say is intended to degrade their memory,“ she said, referring to the deaths of the Tuckers and Baskerville.
Cardwell acknowledged what several on the panel had expressed before their selection to hear the capital murder case—that deliberating the evidence and her client’s guilt or innocence was likely to be a “very sobering task.“
She asked jurors to put aside “the emotion, passion, sadness and horror,“ of what happened that night and deliberate Dandridge’s fate based on their responsiblity to hold the Commonwealth accountable for proving its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
She also suggested that police investigating the murders relied heavily on the statement Dandridge gave to Philadelphia police upon his capture there on Jan. 7—and that the statement may not have been entirely truthful.
“...They relied upon the assumption that everything he said was true,“ said Cardwell.
Gray, 29, Dandridge’s uncle and alleged accomplice in the Tucker and Baskerville slayings, was convicted last month of capital murder in the slayings of the Harvey family in South Richmond.