Bliss murder trial ends first week with focus on police investigation

The trial is expected to continue into mid-week next week.

The first week of Annthoni Bliss’ trial in Cheshire County Superior Court closed Friday, with jurors having spent much of the latter part of the week hearing how investigators from Keene Police, N.H. State Police and Homeland Security Investigations built the case that led to his March 2025 arrest.

Bliss is charged with second-degree murder in the death of 23-month-old Luca Hudson. The state medical examiner has ruled the death a homicide caused by blunt-force trauma, a finding that indicates another person was responsible, though it does not by itself establish murder.

Friday also brought testimony from N.H. Deputy Chief Medical Examiner Mitchell Weinberg, who performed Luca’s autopsy the day after the child died. Weinberg said he reviewed medical and police materials and spoke repeatedly with investigators and Assistant Attorney General Peter Hinckley while reaching his conclusion. He told the court that he found no natural explanation for the death and saw no fractures, past or present.

A central issue for the jury has been what investigators made of early interviews with Bliss and Luca’s mother, Lydia Marrotte. According to testimony from Keene Police Det. Jennifer Truman, neither adult initially acknowledged that Bliss had been alone with Luca and his four-year-old brother in the days before Luca was hospitalized on Jan. 14, 2024. Truman said both later maintained they did not know how the toddler had been injured.

The defense has argued that police locked onto Bliss too quickly and failed to fully consider other possibilities. Defense attorneys also stressed that both Bliss and Marrotte changed their accounts only after police confronted them with inconsistencies.

Prosecutors, meanwhile, have pointed jurors to several pieces of evidence they say support the case against Bliss. Those include his hesitation to say he had been alone with the children, online searches he made early on Jan. 14 that appeared to involve symptoms of head injury in children, and a December 2024 interview in which he gave a different recollection of the evening of Jan. 12 than he had previously offered.

Truman’s testimony included a Jan. 23 recorded call with Bliss, after which she told another detective, in a remark captured on the recording, that he was in serious trouble.

The defense used that and other evidence to argue that investigators treated Bliss differently from Marrotte. Lawyers noted that Bliss participated in multiple recorded interviews without knowing they were being documented, answered questions, and never refused to be recorded. Truman confirmed that he never admitted to harming Luca.

Attorneys also drew attention to the way phone data was handled. Homeland Security Investigations examined Bliss’ and Marrotte’s phones, and the defense said Bliss’ records were reviewed more extensively than Marrotte’s. Truman acknowledged that she accepted Marrotte’s account of the Jan. 12th evening without independent confirmation.

Another point of dispute came from a Dec. 6, 2024 call in which Bliss told Truman that he had been on FaceTime with one of his siblings during the evening of Jan. 12 while at Marrotte’s apartment with the children. Phone records did not support that claim, which the defense said reflected a memory lapse in an interview conducted nearly a year later.

Weinberg also addressed the timing of the injury that caused Luca’s death. In a Dec. 6, 2024 call played for jurors, Truman said the medical examiner believed the fatal injury could be narrowed to a roughly 90-minute window when Marrotte was away from the home on the evening of Jan. 13. Weinberg told the court Friday that he could not determine the timing that precisely and would not have made that statement.

The trial is expected to continue into mid-week next week.