The jurors in the $20 million insurance fraud trial of a Buckingham socialite were asked Tuesday to take another look at a cellphone photo they had been shown previously of the family’s million-dollar mansion the day a fire heavily damaged it more than five years ago.
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| Claire Risoldi (center) |
This time, defense attorneys wanted them to look at something they hadn’t noticed in the photo before.
On the witness stand, an Arizona forensic expert demonstrated how he was able to extract a previously unseen image in the photo, which was snapped by a Buckingham police officer at the Stoney Hill Road home known as Clairemont, on the afternoon of Oct. 22, 2013.
The expert was the first in a series of defense witnesses who testified Tuesday as the trial of Claire Risoldi, 71, entered its second week. The state attorney general has charged Risoldi with fraud, forgery and related offenses in connection with alleged false insurance claims she made after the 2013 fire, as well as two earlier fires. The prosecution rested its case Monday.
Bryan Neumeister, CEO of USA Forensics, showed how he revealed what appears to be a white square on top of a dark square after he enhanced a portion of the photo behind the open front door at Clairemont. The open front door is visible in the original photo, but it’s too dark to see inside the home.
Risoldi and her family have maintained that two bags of jewelry, possibly the white and dark square in the photo, appraised at $10 million had been left on a chair near the front door and went missing after the 2013 fire. A state grand jury found the family falsely accused firefighters of stealing the jewelry; the family has sued insurer AIG, which has refused to pay the jewelry claim.
Neumeister, a specialist in forensic audio and video, testified the defense hired him to examine two of the 2013 cellphone photos.
“I was asked to see what’s inside the door,” he said.
Neumeister made national headlines as a defense witness in the 2013 murder trial of Jodi Arias, the Arizona woman who was convicted of murdering her lover Travis Alexander by stabbing him 30 times and shooting him. He testified when the final photo taken of Alexander was blown up and enhanced, it showed in the pupil of his eye the image of a human outline holding a camera, not a weapon, according to media reports.
While he uncovered a square white object in the enhanced Risoldi case photo, Neumeister said his testimony only involved how the photo was enhanced, not what is in the photo.
“I don’t speculate,” Neumeister added. “Data is data to us.”
The other defense witnesses Tuesday included a worker for the restoration company hired to salvage items that could be cleaned or restored following the 2013 fire.
Orlando Alcantara testified during the two months he worked at Clairemont, another worker found a diamond engagement ring in a sitting room near the kitchen. Later, Alcantara said he found empty Rolex boxes and a box containing a Ferrari watch in the attic.
Claire Risoldi regularly told the people working in the house that she was missing some items including jewelry, Alcantara said. He recalled she offered a $20,000 reward for the return of a sapphire necklace her late husband gave her.
On cross examination, though, Alcantara could not recall how soon after the fire Claire Risoldi asked workers to keep an eye out for jewelry.
“She told you first to look for the jewelry, before you found it,” Senior Deputy Attorney General Linda Montag said.
“She told everybody,” Alcantara said.
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