Sister of slain woman testifies in murder trial

Melissa Johnson put her face into her arm and wept on the witness stand Wednesday when a Nassau prosecutor asked her how close she had been to her slain sister.

"We shared a room . . . ," Johnson began, and could not go on. The judge presiding over the murder trial of Leonardo Valdez-Cruz, 24, of Westbury, sent the jury out of the room while Johnson regained her composure.

Johnson testified that her sister, Jo'Anna Bird, 24, of New Cassel, was trying in the months before she was killed to free herself from her obsessively possessive ex-boyfriend. "He would call her and she would put it on speaker phone," Johnson said. "He would say 'Come home. I'm not playing with you.' "

Prosecutor Madeline Singas told the jury that Valdez-Cruz tormented Bird for months, violating orders of protection by writing, calling and visiting her. At last, Singas said, he stabbed her to death March 19, 2009. Valdez-Cruz, 24, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder.

His lawyer, Dana Grossblatt of Jericho, suggested on Tuesday that police had not thoroughly examined the evidence in the case and said Bird might have been killed in a drug deal gone wrong. She said the drug angel dust had been found in the home where Bird was killed.

When cross-examining Johnson, Grossblatt asked questions about Bird's relatives, several of whom have served jail and prison sentences on a range of offenses. Grossblatt was presumably trying to alert the jury to the possibility that Bird might have been killed because of a family member's connection to the criminal world, rather than by Valdez-Cruz.

In the courtroom gallery, Bird's relatives laughed and groaned at the insinuation, and several walked out.

On the day Bird was killed, Johnson said her sister, hysterical, called their mother. Prosecutors have said that Bird told her mother that Valdez-Cruz was in her home and was holding her prisoner.

Johnson and her mother rushed to Bird's home, she said.

A short time later, police broke down the door to find Bird's lifeless body on a stairwell, prosecutors have said.