Businessman describes home invasion
Selenski accused of binding, threatening to kill jewelry store owner
STROUDSBURG - Samuel Goosay remembered the gun, the handcuffs and the repeated threats of six-and-a-half years past: "I'm going to kill you, I'm going to kill you."
He remembered lifting his bound hands toward his face and maneuvering his right thumb to push away the duct-tape blindfold that had kept him in darkness for more than an hour.
He remembered looking down and seeing a man kneeling on the bedroom floor, rifling through his wife's dresser drawer. He remembered short, brown hair and an oblong face.
He remembered Hugo Selenski.
Victim Remembers: Samuel Goosay remembered the gun, the handcuffs and the threats of six-and-a-half years past: "I'm going to kill you, I'm going to kill you." He remembered Hugo Selenski.
Confidence Man: Selenski assessed his state of mind as he crouched into a sheriff's sedan after closing arguments in his Monroe County home invasion trial: "confident."
Guilty: Selenski, who said he felt "comfortable" going into deliberations, disputed the jurors' decision.
Déjà Vu: The trial offered a preview of the case Luzerne prosecutors plan to present when he is tried for a pair of May 2002 killings.
Goosay, a Monroe County jeweler, identified Selenski on Wednesday as one of the two skimasked men who broke into his house, bound him with handcuffs, duct tape and plastic ties and held him at gunpoint during a violent January 2003 home invasion.
Goosay recalled the harrowing encounter during the first day of testimony in Selenski's trial on 14 charges, including felony robbery, kidnapping and criminal conspiracy.
If convicted, Selenski faces a maximum 153 years in state prison and up to $250,000 in fines.
Selenski faces the death penalty in Luzerne County if convicted of charges he killed former pharmacist Michael Kerkowski and Kerkowski's girlfriend Tammy Fassett in May 2002.
That trial, which has already been delayed more than two years, is on hold indefinitely while the state Supreme Court considers Selenski's appeal of a state Superior Court decision that allowed Luzerne County prosecutors to present evidence allegedly tying Selenski to the home invasion and the killings.
Selenski and the other masked man, Paul Weakley, forcibly their way through the rear door of Goosay's secluded Chestnuthill Township home, Goosay testified.
Selenski held a small, black gun and ordered Goosay to drop to the floor.
Weakley, who pleaded guilty last year to a charge encompassing his role in the killings and the robbery, handcuffed Goosay behind his back with metal handcuffs, put duct tape over his eyes and removed about $800 in cash from his pants pocket, Goosay said.
Selenski and Weakley asked Goosay several times for $20,000, he said. They eventually got away with nearly $50,000 worth of jewelry, Goosay's wife, Ellen, testified.
"For some reason, he thought there was a lot of money in the house," Samuel Goosay said. "I don't have that kind of money, never did have that kind of cash, don't have access to that kind of cash."
Selenski and Weakley also demanded the keys to Goosay's car and his Tannersville store, as well as the codes for his store's security system and safe, Goosay said.
"They kept threatening me the whole time," Goosay said. "'I'm going to kill you, I'm going to kill you - you better give me the right combinations!'"
At one point after pushing the duct tape away from his eye, Goosay grabbed the gun with his bound hands and pointed it at Selenski, Goosay said.
"I told him to get out of the house," Goosay said.
Goosay led Selenski into the hallway and they fought briefly. Selenski punched the older Goosay in the face, chest and ribs and regained possession of the weapon.
Around the same time, Goosay said, Selenski boasted he could never be identified.
"I'm not from the area anyway, you'll never recognize me, you'll never know who I am," Selenski said, according to Goosay.
Goosay described the details of the alleged home invasion with clear, thoughtful narrative strokes, censoring nearly all emotion and shortening to a single letter an expletive his shouted at the man he identified as Selenski.
Goosay's voice quaked only momentarily when he described one of the men threatening to kill Ellen, who was on her way home from a jewelry show in New York.
Later, Selenski's former girlfriend, Christina Strom, said she saw a black gun "similar" to the one used in a Monroe County home invasion in the closet at their Kingston Township home.
Strom, who is required to testify at all of Selenski's trials under a 2006 plea agreement on money laundering charges, said she also found a pair of sneakers in the closet, handcuffs in a dresser drawer and a plastic tie under the floor mat in her Honda Accord - items prosecutors said Selenski used in the home invasion.
Cpl. Jody Thomas Radziewicz, a state police forensic services investigator, testified he found two distinct patterns of shoe prints in the snow along Goosay's driveway and around the home: a design from a New Balance sneaker like the one later found at Selenski's home and the other from a work boot.
In at least three places near the shoe prints, Radziewicz said, he found a checkerboard pattern "identical" to the plastic or rubber base of a beige and green duffel bag found in Goosay's car the day after the robbery.
