Kyle Buffum told jurors he knew hardship as a child in Merrimack County Superior Court on Tuesday, where he is on trial for orchestrating an attempted murder. He was arrested for hosting an underage party and sentenced to 30 days in county jail. Then he assaulted his fiancée, Samantha Heath and was forced out of their apartment by court order. After he discovered Heath’s infidelities, and found out that his friends had known about them all along, Buffum testified that he wanted to die.
Instead, he began plotting the murder of five people.
He would ultimately be stopped, but not before Heath managed to unleash a grisly, near-fatal attack on teenager Andrea Halvorsen on the night of Jan. 26, 2014, stabbing her more than 20 times on the outskirts of Bear Brook State Park.
Heath has already pleaded guilty to the attack, but Buffum insists he was mentally ill at the time, and that jurors should find him guilty by reason of insanity.
