The Joshua Hubert trial in Worcester was derailed on Wednesday when new evidence from law enforcement raised questions about his whereabouts on the night prosecutors say a 7-year-old girl was raped and thrown from a bridge in an attempted murder.
Hubert, 43, faces several indictments in connection with the attempted murder and rape of a 7-year-old girl in Worcester in 2017, which are being combined into one case for the trial that began with opening statements on Monday. He is charged with two counts of attempted murder and two counts of the rape of a child, along with strangulation and kidnapping charges.
Prosecutors say Hubert — a childhood friend of the victim’s father — kidnapped the girl from her grandparents’ home after a party, then raped and strangled her in his car before throwing her from the Interstate 290 overpass into Lake Quinsigamond.
The girl survived and told police it was her “dad’s friend Josh” who had thrown her from the bridge.
Wednesday was supposed to be the third day of testimony, but jurors were sent home so the defense could review the new evidence.
Here’s what we know about the case in the first four days of trial.
‘He wanted me dead’
Now 15, the girl testified Monday that she survived that night by playing dead, and remembered Hubert’s face clearly. She said she even felt a strange relief falling from the bridge — “because he couldn’t hurt me anymore.”
Within the first hour after opening statements on Monday, the girl took the stand, answering questions and positively identifying Hubert. MassLive does not name victims of rape.
She recounted what happened Aug. 27, 2017. It was hours after a family member’s birthday party at her grandparents’ Worcester home, and she had changed into a “pink princess onesie” to spend the night.
She recalled falling asleep on a recliner in the living room and suddenly being awoken, then carried outside. She thought it was her grandfather at first, but when she opened her eyes, she saw Hubert placing her into his car. He told her he was taking her to her parents’ house, she said.
Prosecutors say that was when Hubert kidnapped the girl at around 2:30 a.m. and put her into his Saturn Ion out front of the grandparents’ home.
The girl remembered Hubert driving her around the city for “a long time.” At one point, when she became confused why they weren’t at her parents’ yet, Hubert said, “Oops, I guess we’re lost,” she said.
Hubert pulled over and got in the backseat with the child at several points in the drive, prosecutors said, and at one point raped her.
“I was thinking that he wanted me dead,” she told the jury.
She recalled trying to kick at his chest with her feet and how she was strangled with both hands, which left bruises across her neck. He tied a rope around her neck and put a plastic shopping bag over her head, and put her in the trunk.
“If I breathed really lightly and quietly, he would think that I was dead and everything would stop,” she said.
Just before 4 a.m., prosecutors say Hubert stopped his car on the I-290 overpass at the Worcester-Shrewsbury line. He threw the child, wrapped in a blanket, over the bridge into Lake Quinsigamond.
The girl remembered falling for “a really long time.”
She remembered being scared but also “slightly relieved” when she landed in the water, “because he couldn’t hurt me anymore,” she told the jury.
With the blanket she’d been wrapped in now water-logged in her arms, the girl swam toward a house with an outside light on. She remembered climbing over a rock wall onto the property, and said it took nearly a full minute before someone came to the door — well past 4 a.m.
The child was taken to the hospital after police arrived, where she gave a detailed account of the night, positively identified Hubert through pictures and officers observed strangulation marks on her neck.
She remembered watching “Doc McStuffins,” an animated Disney Junior series, on the TV in the hospital room.
But as a 7-year-old, she didn’t understand what rape was, she told the courtroom. She didn’t tell anyone about that part until 2022, when she told her cousin first.
As the defense challenged her account Monday, the 15-year-old began crying, but she refused to stop answering.
‘No forensic link’ between crime and suspect
During opening statements on Monday, prosecutor Emily Meyers openly acknowledged the absence of physical evidence against Hubert.
“You will hear that despite testing seat belts, seats of the defendant’s car and [her] clothing, there is no forensic link to the defendant,” Meyers said.
“There is, however, a forensic link to her father … and you will hear from her father about why these sperm cells were found in his daughter’s clothes,” she said.
Despite the lack of DNA evidence against Hubert, Meyers and fellow prosecutor David McShera pointed to surveillance footage of him cleaning his car the next morning in their opening statements, and said his girlfriend at the time said she’d “never” seen him clean his car before.
They also said the jury would hear from the girl and review physical evidence collected at the time, including a ligature mark and broken capillaries on her face.
Over the past eight years, prosecutors have previously said there is surveillance footage that depicts Hubert driving around Worcester that night, making stops at a gas station and looking into the trunk of his car.
Prosecutors also previously said a witness saw a car parked on the I-290 bridge over Lake Quinsigamond in the early-morning hours of Aug. 27, 2017. The witness reported seeing a person throwing something off the bridge.
Parents explain DNA on underwear
The girl’s mother and biological father filed for divorce in 2020 after 12 years of marriage, and the mother testified that her relationship with her daughter’s father is “tenuous.”
During their testimonies on Monday and Tuesday, Hubert’s attorney, Kevin Larson, grilled both parents on how the father’s sperm cell DNA got onto their daughter’s underwear.
“Do you know how the sperm got on the underwear?” Larson asked the mother on Monday.
“I can’t say with 100% certainty, but our laundry hamper was in the bathroom, and everybody’s clothes went into it,” the mother replied.
The mother denied she put “dirty” underwear on her daughter, but said that the child had worn the same pair that morning and into the night.
She was wearing that pair after she changed into pajamas to sleep over at her grandparents’ after the party that August 2017 night, she said, and it was the pair on the child’s body when she showed up soaking wet in pink pajamas on a stranger’s doorstep by Lake Quinsigamond.
While the girl’s father acknowledged his DNA was found on her underwear during his testimony, he gave several scenarios of how it could’ve ended up there.
One was the same laundry theory his ex-wife gave, and that the mixed laundry would be “all washed together.”
Additionally, clothes would often be left on the floor of the family’s bathroom, the father testified, where he had masturbated and had sex with the mother.
New evidence could lead to mistrial request
In a turn of events, Hubert’s attorney says new evidence supporting his client’s innocence surfaced on Tuesday that had been withheld from him by the prosecution for years.
“I received cellphone tower mapping of my client’s phone that is exculpatory,” Larson said Tuesday afternoon, meaning it is favorable to the defendant.
“I need to look at it more carefully, figure out how it’s going to be handled … figure out what to do about the fact that it’s just being given to me now, eight years after this event happened, considering that it’s exculpatory and not inculpatory,” he said.
Larson said he only received the evidence during lunch on Tuesday, from a 2022 law enforcement report he hadn’t seen before — a report created by government witness Mark Sanders, a Criminal Intelligence Analyst with NESPIN.
The report, requested by Worcester Police Det. Cristin Chabot, includes an animation that shows Hubert’s cellphone location on Aug. 27, 2017. Larson said the data places Hubert away from the I-290 bridge at the time the girl was thrown into the water.
Neither the report nor the animation was previously provided to the defense, despite being required in discovery, Larson said.
Though it appears the prosecutors currently handling the Hubert case — Emily Meyers and David McShera — were not aware of Sanders’ report, “the prosecution team, specifically Detective Cristin Chatbot, has had this information since on or about January 20, 2022,” Larson said.
This discovery will “likely have a significant impact on the presentation of this case,” Larson’s motion read.
Because of the discovery, the jury was adjourned for the day just after 9 a.m. on Wednesday. This gives the defense time to “consider the possibility of requesting a mistrial” and restructure its case, the motion read.
The trial is expected to continue on Thursday morning.
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