Jury deliberations set to resume in trial of Irish firefighter charged with rape
Delivering his closing argument, defense attorney Daniel C. Reilly told jurors an acquittal would end the 'nightmare' that has taken over Crosbie's life.
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Reilly urged jurors find Crosbie not guilty.
'I'm going to ask you to end that nightmare and find him not guilty,' he said.
Reilly argued there is not enough evidence to link Crosbie to the alleged rape, in part, because the woman never identified Crosbie's multiple arm tattoos in the aftermath of March 14, 2024 incident.
'The Commonwealth has not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Crosbie committed the crime he is accused of,' Reilly told jurors.
Speaking after the defense, Suffolk Assistant District Attorney Erin Murphy insisted the evidence supports a guilty verdict in the case.
In his closing, Reilly said the woman was too drunk to be a reliable narrator of her version of what happened inside the hotel room.
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Murphy told jurors in her closing that while the woman had consumed alcohol, she was able to provide a detailed description of the incident to Boston police and medical staff hours later.
'If she was so drunk, or so mixed up, or if she was making up a story, then how did she have so much right?' Murphy asked jurors.
Additionally, evidence and records from the night of March 14, 2024 connect the defendant to the hotel room where the woman alleges she was assaulted, the prosecutor told jurors.
Murphy also reminded the jury that there were two male DNA profiles found in a genital swab from the woman.
'It's a misnomer to say the DNA was inconclusive. What is conclusive is there were two distinct male profiles,' Murphy said.
'There's no mystery man here, there's no phantom rapist who slipped off into the night,' Murphy continued. 'Terrence Crosbie is guilty.'
Crosbie
for the St. Patrick's Day parade with fellow members of the Dublin Fire Brigade and checked into the Omni Parker House on March 14, 2024.
On Friday, he took the witness stand and testified he was sharing the hotel room with fellow firefighter Liam O'Brien.
Crosbie said he was in the hotel room when O'Brien returned with a woman he met at The Black Rose bar. Crosbie said he left the room, went down the hall, and sat in a chair for roughly two hours.
He said he then returned to the room and found his bed still made, with the towel he'd thrown on the bed earlier still there.
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He testified that he undressed down to his boxers and got into bed. He said he had been in his bed for just over a minute when he heard the woman get out of O'Brien's bed and enter the bathroom.
She came out, he said, rummaged around for her belongings, and left.
'I had no physical or verbal contact with her at all,' Crosbie said.
Reilly directly asked Crosbie whether he committed the crime he is charged with.
'Did you rape' the woman?, Reilly asked.
'I did not,' Crosbie replied.
During the trial last week, the woman testified that after a night of socializing in Boston during which she consumed alcohol, she went to the hotel with O'Brien, where they had consensual sex.
The woman said she did not know anyone else was staying in the room.
She testified that she fell asleep in a second bed in the room and was sexually assaulted by Crosbie when he later climbed into the bed.
'I woke up, and a guy was inside of me,' the woman testified earlier this week, tears streaming down her face as she read a text message she sent to a friend at 2:18 a.m., shortly after the alleged attack.
On the witness stand last Tuesday, the woman described waking up to someone raping her.
'What are you doing? Stop!' the woman told police she said to the man, according to a police report.
After the alleged assault, she said Crosbie followed her around the hotel room, trying to kiss her and pushed her against the wall as she gathered her clothes to leave.
The woman, who is an attorney, said she left the room within 10 minutes of waking up.
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When the woman was shown photos of the hotel room in court, as well as security images of herself leaving the room, she began to cry.
The woman said she
messaged a friend at 2:18 a.m. to say she had been assaulted. She went home and changed her clothes before going to Massachusetts General Hospital, where she spoke with police.
Rebecca Boissaye, a criminalist at the Boston Police Crime Lab since 2009, testified last week that she performed the initial DNA testing on samples from the woman's evidence collection kit, taken hours after the alleged assault.
Boissaye said she did two rounds of testing, one in March 2024 and the second in October.
On cross-examination,
defense attorney Patrick Garrity asked multiple times
if it was correct that Crosbie's DNA was not found in the woman's swabs.
'In the profiles detected, he was not included,' Boissaye responded.
Murphy asked why skin cells might not be detected during testing.
'We don't always have enough DNA' to detect the skin cells a person may have left behind, Boissaye said.
Testifying for the defense, Alexis DeCesaris, a DNA analyst at Bode Technology, said DNA from two males was found in the woman's genital swab, but the amount was too small to compare to a person's genetic profile.
Information from earlier Globe reporting was used in this account.
John R. Ellement contributed to this report.
Claire Thornton can be reached at
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