RIDGWAY — Graphic testimony and a rare admission of guilt marked day one in the Elk County murder trial of Nicholas Martin, whose defense team, in seeking a lesser conviction, acknowledged he killed 18-year-old Alyssa Forsyth and dumped the body in a wooded area park, while framing it as a crime of passion and not the cold-blooded killing portrayed by the state.  

Martin, 24, broke down sobbing during opening arguments as prosecutors with the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General recounted a tumultuous, “on-again, off-again” relationship between him and Forsyth, one they say culminated in her 2013 stabbing death inside of his First Avenue apartment in Johnsonburg.

Prosecutor Simquita Bridges said Forsyth had recently lost a pregnancy believed to have been Martin’s and struggled with drug and alcohol addiction. 

Bridges said the struggle ended on March 23, 2013 with Martin choking and stabbing her “more than 100 times” during or after a sexual encounter inside his home.

Bridges said when Forsyth pleaded for her life, Martin “Told her to stop crying and continued to stab her.”

One stab wound was reported through her hand as it was held up to another wound already inflicted on her neck.

In the course of the week-long trial, prosecutors hope to cast Martin as a calculating killer in asking a panel of eight male and six female jurors to return a first-degree murder conviction that could see him sent to prison for life.

But his defense team, comprised of attorneys George Nejm Daghir of St. Marys and Michael Marshall of DuBois, want the panel to instead consider Martin as troubled and alcohol-addled, a man who snapped when confronted with a partner’s alleged infidelities and revelations of her drug abuse.

“I’ll tell you right now, Nick did kill her,” attorney Marshall said to the jurors before asking them to consider convicting Martin of lesser voluntary manslaughter or third-degree murder counts.

Marshall based these suggestions on claims Martin was provoked by Forsyth, revealing she had cheated on him — a “passion killing” as he called it — and so intoxicated at the time he would have been incapable of rational thought.

Marshall said Martin also found a syringe used to inject drugs in Forsyth’s purse, although its contents were not conclusively stated.  

“This was not a willful, deliberate, premeditated killing,” Marshall said. “It was a tragedy, a horrible thing.” 

With that statement jurors are now largely left to focus not on the who or how, but on the why.

But while motive is certain to figure prominently in the trial’s upcoming defense phase, Wednesday’s opening belonged to the prosecution and centered heavily on a mountain of  physical and circumstantial state’s evidence tying Martin to the crime. 

It included testimony from Jessie Pino, a former Johnsonburg resident and drinking buddy of Martin’s, who said the two had developed a friendship in the months leading up to Forsyth’s death.

“We related to each other,” Pino said of Martin. “We were both going through stuff.”

But Pino said that all changed when Martin confessed to killing Forsyth, a childhood friend of Pino’s, and disposing of the body in a desolate corner of Ridgway Township’s Sandy Beach Recreational Park. Police found her there days later, nude, wrapped in trash bags and prosecutors say “riddled with stab wounds.”

On the night of her death, Pino said he and Martin had played a drinking game in Martin’s 416 First Ave. apartment, polishing off a bottle of Cognac before Martin was called to pick Forsyth up from a St. Marys bar.

Testimony heard on Wednesday indicates Martin dropped Pino off at home and then brought Forsyth back to his place.

It is then and there that defense attorneys say an argument between Martin and Forsyth turned physical and ultimately deadly.

But Pino said there was no mention of a fight when a distraught Martin showed up at his apartment the next day to confess to the killing.

“He never said it was an accident,” Pino said. “He didn’t tell me Alyssa had done anything to upset him.”

In his testimony, Pino claimed Martin instead said, “He never knew it was so easy for a knife to go into a person like that,” adding, “I was terrified for my own life.”

Increasingly fearful and unsure of whether to believe Martin, Pino said he waited days before contacting police. He said it was the discovery of Forsyth’s cellphone in his apartment, allegedly left there by Martin the day after her death, that prompted him to make the call.

“That’s when everything clicked,” he said.

Acting on his tip, officers with the state police and Johnsonburg Borough Police commenced their investigation.

Johnsonburg Borough police officer Dave Cuneo testified that in a preliminary search outside of Martin’s home he located a trove of physical evidence in garbage bags placed by the curb, as well as in Martin’s sport-utility vehicle illegally parked nearby.

Cuneo said inside the trash bags were personal effects — underwear, credit cards and a wallet belonging to Forsyth — along with carpet, bedding and towels soaked in arterial blood.

Prosecutors said the items were removed by Martin from his apartment and the blood later identified as Forsyth’s.

In Martin’s SUV, police said they also found a shovel with dirt matching that at the location where Forsyth’s body was found, as well as an empty box of trash bags similar to those found on the body.

“Now the hair on my neck is raised up,” Cuneo recalled of the discovery. 

The officer said he then began securing the evidence, much of which was presented to the jury on Wednesday either in live, physical displays or photographs.

After more than two years, the fluid’s color on the items presented in court had mostly faded and darkened.

Cuneo said in his experience, the amount of blood present on the items indicated a fatality, adding, “that amount of blood is inconsistent with human life.”

Testimony was also heard Wednesday from the Johnsonburg police chief who said Martin confessed to placing the garbage bags found by Cuneo on the curb, and another who took Martin into custody after briefly staking out his apartment.

Martin was charged with Forsyth’s death on March 26, 2013, the day a team of state and local police recovered her body.

Officers who led the search also testified, recounting it through a series of photographs taken at the Ridgway Township location the following day.

They included photos of Forsyth’s body, wrapped in two trash bags and curled up in a fetal position. Puncture marks are visible on her back and arms and blood is seen caked around her fingers.

In all, more than 100 exhibits were shown Wednesday, including photos of a blood-flecked screwdriver and knife recovered at Martin’s home which the prosecution claims inflicted the fatal injuries. 

Also in the home, amid blood splashed belongings and cutlery, a picture of a smiling Martin and Forsyth is shown hanging on a wall of the apartment, around it sits a frame reading “Love.”

The trial resumes at 9 a.m. today and is set to last through April 2.