"Suspect in hairdresser killing takes stand, blames third man; Says he awoke to find victim" by Milton J. Valencia, Globe Staff | February 18, 2010
The man accused of savagely stabbing to death a popular 20-year-old hairdresser from the South End after they met at a bar two years ago is professing his innocence and has tried to direct a jury’s attention to a third man.
Steven Odegard, a 42-year-old from Dorchester, testified in his own defense in Suffolk Superior Court yesterday. He said he told Daniel Yakovleff and the third man to go into his bedroom in the early morning of Jan. 17, 2008, after having sexual relations with Yakovleff.
He said he awoke at around 6 a.m. to find Yakovleff in his bed with a 13-inch carving knife in his chest, surrounded by blood. The other man with them that night was no longer there, he said....
Odegard testified that he passed out hours earlier on the couch in his living room, overwhelmed by the drinks, marijuana, kolodopin prescription drugs, and Levitrol sexual performance drug he took....
I don't know if I want to read or report anymore of this sick s***, folks.
Odegard’s testified in the fourth week of his murder trial. The slaying had alarmed the city’s gay community until he was indicted, nearly a year after the killing.
Wearing a pink tie, a dark gray suit, and glasses, Odegard calmly described the night before the brutal killing.
Living alone after a long romantic relationship, he said he visited several gay bars in the South End and drank wine and Jack Daniel’s before ending up at Bar Eagle on Tremont Street, which he described as the last place to get an alcoholic drink before the city’s 2 a.m. bar closing time.
There, he met Yakovleff, a man half his age who approached him and soon after asked to go home with him, he said. Odegard joked with him that he looked like Harry Potter.
“He was just cute, so I said, ‘sure, OK,’ ’’ he said.
Odegard said that at the Tremont Bar, Yakovleff asked him if a third person could come with them to Odegard’s Savin Hill home. He said OK....
I think I'm going to be sick.
At his home that night, he and Yakovleff smoked marijuana while the man moved about the apartment, Odegard said. When he and Yakovleff started to have sexual relations, the man just watched.
“To me, he was just a little creepy,’’ Odegard said.
This whole lifestyle sounds "creepy" to me.
Earlier in the trial, Odegard’s former partner and still close friend, David Oliveri, testified that while they lived together, Odegard was diagnosed with a neurological disease; he would have difficulty speaking, and his face would spasm.
He was prescribed kolodopin, and he found that mixing the pills with alcohol could be therapeutic. It was also euphoric....
Great, a gay little drug addict abusing his pills. Sigh.
An elderly woman, dressed in a dark coat and wearing a babushka, gave him a piece of her mind, grabbing a nearby price scanner and beating him with it until he fled from the store....
I'll bet that guy gets the razzing at the next thieves meeting.
--more--"
Also see: Brockton man, 32, is shot to death
