'Fighting words': Woman said a shirtless Cassaro confronted man minutes before his death
The woman central to a fight that left one man dead and another in jail told jurors Tuesday she had drank "too much" that night to remember all the details.
Thomas Brown, 50, of Bucyrus, faces two counts of murder in the January 2023 death of Sean Cassaro.
Brown's trial began Monday in the courtroom of Crawford County Common Pleas Judge Sean Leuthold with the selection of nine men and five women — 12 jurors and two alternates — from a pool of more than 100.
Proceedings resumed Tuesday with opening statements. Special prosecutors Micah Ault and Drew Wood are bringing the case for the state while James Mayer III and Sean Boone defend Brown.
Rochelle Leonhardt, who admitted she had been intimate with both men, took the witness stand Tuesday afternoon.
Cassaro had been at a bar in Mansfield night of his death
Leonhardt told jurors the saga began the night of Jan. 21, 2023, which was a Saturday.
"It was my birthday weekend," the woman said.
Leonhardt said she and Cassaro, who she had been dating for "about two months," rode with friends to a bar in Mansfield where they stayed for several hours.
Sometime shortly after midnight, the friends who drove decided they were ready to go home, so they took Leonhardt and Cassaro back to Bucyrus and dropped them off downtown outside the Crazy Fox Saloon.
Leonhardt said the couple walked into the bar "close to closing time" and discovered a lot of people they knew, including Brown.
Defendant seen on bar surveillance hour before murder
Attorneys on both sides of the courtroom were interested in video surveillance from inside the Crazy Fox that night, which they played for jurors Tuesday afternoon.
Leonhardt watched the film and identified herself and Cassaro walking into the bar a little after 1:30 a.m. Jan. 22, 2023.
The woman then pointed out a man sitting on a barstool and said it was Brown.
On the screen, the woman's likeness walked over to that of Brown's.
"You came up to Tom (Brown)?" Mayer asked the woman in court Tuesday.
"That's fair," Leonhardt answered the defense attorney.
The woman told jurors she could not remember what she and Brown had spoken about at the bar that night.
The surveillance video then showed Leonhardt put her arm around Brown, who remained seated with his back to the bar.
"It appears everyone was having a good time?" Mayer asked.
"Right," the woman said.
Leonhardt remained next to Brown on the screen for several minutes, at one point grabbing her cellphone to take a selfie photograph of herself with Brown.
She explained for jurors Tuesday that she and Brown had had physical relations "one time" a few months before the night of focus in the trial.
At closing time, everyone left the Crazy Fox.
'The first thing that was said between the two of them'
Leonhardt said Brown was gone by the time she and Cassaro walked out the bar's front door.
The woman said it was then, as they started walking away from the Crazy Fox, that Cassaro became upset with her for talking to Brown at the bar.
Leonhardt's testimony was that she told Cassaro she wanted to walk alone to her apartment on Tiffin Street, and that she thought it was best for him to go by himself to his own place on Rensselaer Street for the night.
The alcohol clouded some of what came next, the woman told jurors, but she said she remembered talking to Brown on the phone during her walk home, eventually telling the man where she was.
She said Brown picked her up in his car and drove her the rest of the way to her place on Tiffin Street.
Brown pulled into her drive, Leonhardt said, and "within seconds" Cassaro was standing in the lawn outside the car, shirtless, pounding on the vehicle while he shouted at them.
"That was the first thing that was said between the two of them?" Mayer asked.
"Right," Leonhardt said.
'They sounded like fighting words'
The woman said Cassaro cursed at Brown and asked the man if he knew who he was.
"They sounded like fighting words," Leonhardt said.
She said she recalled thinking it was odd for Cassaro to have his shirt off in the frigid January air.
After a few moments, she said, Brown stepped out of his car to speak with Cassaro.
"I figured they would hash it out and then go their own separate ways," Leonhardt said.
She told jurors she also got out of the car, but quickly decided to go into her house because of the cold.
Several minutes later, she went back outside and found Brown getting into his car.
"He just screamed: 'He's crazy,'" Leonhardt said of Brown.
The woman said Brown drove away.
Cassaro, she said, was lying in her driveway.
"I tried to flip him over," Leonhardt said. "I couldn't, unfortunately."
The woman testified she never saw any of the fight, and that she never thought anyone's life was in danger.
She said she called a friend and told them Cassaro had passed out in her driveway. That friend told her to throw a glass of water on the man to awaken him, which Leonhardt said she did.
After the water didn't arouse Cassaro, she finally called 911. It wasn't long after paramedics arrived that Leonhardt learned Cassaro had died.
The trial was slated to pick back up 8:45 a.m. Wednesday.
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This article originally appeared on Bucyrus Telegraph-Forum: Lover of both testifies about Sean Cassaro in Thomas Brown's trial
