Pregnant pauses: Stalking trial defendant slow-walks answers from prosecution

Mauricio Damian Guerrero during cross-examination from Straffford County Deputy Attorney Emily Garod. (WMUR screen capture)

DOVER - After giving crisp, succinct answers during direct questioning by his defense attorney, the man accused of burglary in the OnlyFans stalking trial made jurors suffer through an agonizing three hours of cross-examination on Monday during which he often spent minutes on end pondering the prosecutor's questions before asking her to repeat the question.
Two hours into the cross-examination by Strafford County Deputy County Attorney Emily Garod she finally called him out.
"Why are you taking so long to talk?" a frustrated Garod demanded. "Is that cause you're thinking about your answer?"
"I'm trying to process your question and give the best answer," replied Mauricio Damian Guerrero, 22, of Bensalem, Pa., who faces decades in prison on five burglary charges as well as misdemeanor invasion of privacy charges for taking a video of her genitalia as she slept with her toddler son in her bedroom he had broken into.
Throughout the brutal cross-examination levied by Garod, Guerrero steadfastly recounted that he thought the Somersworth victim, whom he had met on the OnlyFans website just three months earlier, wanted him to break into her home, put a tracker on her phone and take pictures of her vagina while she slept heavily after drinking wine all night.
The first of seven unannounced visits to the victim's residence was on Dec. 7.
"And when you came up on Dec. 7 from Pennsylvania she said, 'Don't ever do this again," Garod said. "So after she said that you thought she wanted you to break into her house?"
Guerrero remained silent for a full minute and began mumbling.
"What was the question again?" he finally asked.
"You knew she didn't want you at her mom's house, right?"
"Yes," he said.

Garod also revealed a note sent by Guerrero to the victim soon after his arrest by Somersworth Police on Feb. 9, 2022.
She read the note aloud in court: "I don't know why I did this I'm s stupid," she read. "I didn't mean for this to happen to you."
"Nowhere does it say, 'I thought you wanted me to do this.'" Garod added.
Garod then recounted the two hours he spent in the victim's bedroom beginning around 2 a.m. on Feb. 9 when his said to have gone through the victim's belongings including her phone which he tried desperately to get access to.
"You found her sleeping, you go in around 2 a.m. and you're in there for roughly two hours," Garod noted. :You're wearing socks, tiptoeing around. When she does wake, she sees you in the hallway, you run to the attic and she texts you, "Are you in my fucking house?"
"You don't say I'm trying to make you happy. You cut a hole in the screen to get out an attic window. do you actually believe she wanted you there?"
"I don't know what she wanted from me," Guerrero said.
During closing arguments that followed the defendant's testimony, defense attorney Harry Starbranch Jr. repeated again that the victim wanted to be stalked, that she wanted Guerrero to be obsessed by her and thought he was doing her bidding when he broke into her house.

Garod, in closings, countered that he had made four trips to Somersworth in three weeks after they had said their good byes through texts.
"This was not a stalking game," she said. "This was all about sex. Between Jan. 10 and Feb. 9 he broke into her house four times after their breakup. He begins searching for burglary tools. The defendant knew what he was doing."
The jury will begin its deliberations today.