Teen charged with killing teacher refuses to enter courtroom

The remains of Ritzer, 24, had not yet been discovered by Danvers
police, who found her vehicle in the Danvers High School parking lot while doing a well-being check for her parents in Andover, not
realizing her killer was being questioned one town away.

A prosecutor in the trial of a MA teenager charged with raping and killing his high school math teacher has told a jury that the boy went to school on the day she died with a “terrible goal:” to kill his teacher.

That bin was going to be brought into the courtroom as evidence after the break, prosecutor Kate MacDougall said.

“She sensed that he was irritated with that line of questioning”, MacDougall said.

Ritzer testified that her daughter’s phone went to voicemail several times.

The murder trial of a 16-year-old MA high school student slammed to a halt Tuesday after the teenager refused to leave his holding cell, where he was mumbling and twitching, court officers said. Defense attorney Denise Regan said her client “was about to explode” and “didn’t want to hurt anyone”, the Boston Globe reported.

At first, Peggie said on the stand Tuesday, she feared Colleen had been in a vehicle crash.

When she didn’t that day, the family at first thought she had made other plans or been in an accident. They began to worry when she wasn’t home for dinner, was not answering her cellphone, and hadn’t posted on Facebook. Chism became more and more tense, said Regan. When they searched it, they found a woman’s wallet with the bloody box cutter inside.

“I asked him if he knew where the girl was”, DeBernardo said.

Investigators were about to wheel in a blood-stained recycling bin, which had carried the teacher’s body on the day she was killed, when Chism refused to return to court.

“He stated that she was buried in the woods”, DeBernardo said.

Testimony is scheduled to resume Tuesday, when Ritzer’s mother is expected to testify.