Trial begins in slaying of infant, grandmother

Soon after Venkata Venna and his wife, Latha, moved to the Marquis apartment complex in King of Prussia with their infant daughter in the summer of 2012, they befriended a couple who, like themselves, had moved to the United States from India.

When they learned that Raghunandan Yandamuri's wife was pregnant, the Vennas felt bad that the couple had no family nearby and hosted a traditional meal at their home. Venkata Venna's mother, Satayrathi, prepared the feast.

"She cooked so many dishes," Venkata Venna testified Thursday in Montgomery County Court before breaking into tears.

Rather than making a new friend, prosecutors said, the Vennas unknowingly welcomed a viper into their home. One morning about two months later, Yandamuri stabbed the 61-year-old grandmother to death in the Vennas' apartment and zipped 10-month-old Saanvi Venna into a suitcase after shoving a rag into her mouth, they said. The baby suffocated slowly and was found days later in an empty room in the apartment complex.

In opening arguments in Yandamuri's capital murder trial, Deputy District Attorney Samantha Cauffman painted Yandamuri, 28, as calculating and intelligent, a man who concocted a kidnapping plot as a solution to crushing debt from his gambling addiction but who quickly abandoned the plan and turned to violence.

She cautioned jurors not to be fooled by Yandamuri's soft-spoken nature. "You will see through that exterior to the true evil festering in his core," she said.

A former information technology worker, Yandamuri is representing himself with help from a court-appointed attorney.

The trial, before Common Pleas Court Judge Steven O'Neill in Norristown, is expected to last at least a week. The courtroom Thursday was packed with onlookers, including relatives of both families, who frequently wept during testimony.

Cauffman said Yandamuri came up with the idea of abducting the baby two days before the October 2012 slayings, at a party with the Vennas and other friends. Latha Venna had recently gotten a job, and told friends her mother-in-law watched the baby while she was at work. The baby was wearing a necklace made of real gold, Cauffman said, and Yandamuri "started to hear opportunity knocking."

Yandamuri initially confessed, but later recanted and said he was coerced. In his opening statement, Yandamuri told jurors the police had made him a scapegoat for the killings.

"I was there at the wrong place, wrong time," he said.

He urged the six men and six women on the jury to keep an open mind. Before the arrest, he said, his life was like theirs, with a wife and an annual salary close to $100,000. He spoke about himself in the third person at times, and said the prosecutors were painting him as a monster.

He also warned that they would see graphic photographs that could inflame them, particularly the women on the jury.

Venkata and Latha Venna, who took the stand Thursday, had to answer questions from Yandamuri on cross-examination. Both tried not to look at him and called him "the defendant" even when addressing him. Latha Venna shook and appeared to feel ill.

They also described how a normal Monday morning became a nightmare of grief and horror.

After leaving for work that day, Latha Venna grew concerned when her usual lunchtime call home went unanswered. Her husband eventually drove home to check, and found his mother in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor. When he turned her over, he saw a deep slash through her throat and wounds in her chest.

Jurors heard his frantic 911 call when he realized his daughter was gone, and saw crime scene photographs showing Satayrathi Venna on the floor, her neck dark with blood. Ransom notes, which prosecutors said Yandamuri typed at his office, were scattered on the floor. The family's jewelry was gone.

Latha Venna spoke of saying goodbye to her daughter for the last time, how the girl jumped into her arms and her father's.

"She was my first baby after seven years of marriage," she wept. "I lost my baby."