Focus Shifts To Friend's Testimony, Cell Phone Records In Bob Bashara Murder Trial
DETROIT (WWJ) -- A friend of Bob Bashara testified in the Grosse Pointe businessman's murder trial on Monday, saying that he never even saw the two have a fight.
Jim Wilson told the court that Bob Bashara never talked about divorce and that he "praised" his wife, Jane Bashara. Wilson added that Bashara told him he had nothing to do with his wife's death and that he would have to defend himself.
Wilson explained that he and Bob Bashara used to smoke marijuana and do cocaine while on the golf course at Lochmoor Country Club.
Jane Bashara was killed in 2012 by a former handyman Joseph Gentz, who confessed to the strangulation death of the 56-year-old in the garage of her Grosse Pointe Park home, but refused to take the stand as a witness.
Gentz is presently serving 17-to-28 years in prison after pleading guilty to second degree murder in the case. He admitted to killing Jane Bashara, saying her husband paid him for the job and then forced him to go through with it at gunpoint.
Bob Bashara remains behind bars after he pleaded guilty to trying to have Gentz killed in jail.
Wilson also claimed that Bob Bashara told him that "he liked to spank girls, and that Jane did not like to be spanked."
Bob Bashara's one-time mistress, Rachael Gillett, testified Thursday and said she thought she was the reason that his wife was murdered.
Prosecutors are trying to establish that Bob Bashara's relationship with Gillett and his obsession with a BDSM lifestyle drove him to order Gentz to kill his wife.
Cell phone use and call frequency was also dissected Monday. Stan Brue, an Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent and text message specialist, said that Bob Bashara made 472 calls to Gentz in the 180 days before his wife's death -- 22 of those calls made the day before she was killed.
