Defense raises further doubts in Eber trial

By Noah Manskar and Hannah Urano
Online Editor and News Editor

Defense attorney Joel Spitzer continued to raise doubts Wednesday about the state’s case against Nicholas Eber, the Delaware man accused of stabbing Anthony Peddle ’14.

Spitzer showed the jury a series of text messages from May 3 between Sean Anthony ’14, Eber’s ex-boyfriend, in which he told Eber he did not think he attacked Peddle early that morning at the Chi Phi fraternity house.

“… I know it’s not you. Anthony (Peddle) did not target you, but I can’t control it anymore. I don’t know what I can do,” he wrote.

On May 6, Anthony said he would defy the police’s request that he not contact him. “You can text me any time you want, I don’t care what the police say,” he wrote to Eber. “I’ll reach out to you and they can’t stop me from reaching out to you.”

Spitzer also noted Anthony, Peddle’s close friend and roommate, paid Eber a visit in jail after he was arrested May 8.

In response, prosecutor Andy Bigler argued Anthony said those things because he did not want to believe Eber, whom he dated for 10 months, would have stabbed his roommate and best friend. Anthony testified that he still loved Eber at the time of the crime.

On Tuesday, Spitzer argued there were links between the stabbing and Matthew Costello, who was acting erratically in a nearby convenience store three hours after the incident. He had blood on his nose and was wearing a hooded sweatshirt that looked like the assailant’s.

In his cross-examination of Delaware Police Department detective sergeant John Radabaugh on Wednesday, Spitzer argued “media pressure” on the investigation may have caused him to be too hasty in ruling Costello out.

Because police did not get his DNA, search his cell phone or residence or question him, they could not have eliminated him as a suspect completely, Spitzer said.

Police felt certain Costello was not involved in the stabbing, Radabaugh said. He was never a person of interest and it would have been “a waste of time” to pursue him.

Police found an olive green hooded sweatshirt in Eber’s apartment that matched Peddle’s description of the attacker’s clothing. The garment had a hole that matched a cut on Eber’s arm, which he said came from a glass he broke doing dishes.

The fibers around the hole indicated the left side of it had been cut and the right side torn away, according to Suzanne Noffsinger, the state’s trace evidence expert who testified Wednesday on her examination of the sweatshirt.

Peddle was in the courtroom for the first two days of trial and is expected to take the stand before the jury of eight women and four men on Thursday.

Spitzer and Jason Halsey, Eber’s other defense attorney, will present their side of the case following his testimony.

Editor-in-Chief Ellin Youse contributed reporting to this story.