NASHUA – Kimberly Cates’ first instinct was to protect her daughter from the murderous attackers in her bedroom.

She fought and clawed and withstood more than 30 stabbing, hacking, slashing wounds before a final one, a slit throat, killed her.

Her daughter, Jaimie, awoke to her mother’s screams. She got up from her mother’s bed and suffered similarly vicious blows. The 11-year-old was covered in blood and left for dead, according to Assistant Attorney General Peter Hinckley.

Hinckley stood in front of the defense table Tuesday in Hillsborough County Superior Court and stared at Spader. He pointed a finger at Spader and called him a murderer, a “merciless,” cold-blooded murderer.

Each time Hinckley stared him down, Spader stared straight back over the steepled fingers he held in front of him.

“Their cries, their screams, their begs didn’t stop him,” Hinckley said. “Kim and Jaimie fought hard for their lives.”

Spader is accused of wielding the machete during the Oct. 4, 2009, home invasion on Trow Road in Mont Vernon. He is charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder, witness tampering, and conspiracy to murder and burglary. He faces life without parole.

“Who would hack apart a helpless, defenseless mother and child in their bed and then laugh and boast about it?” Hinckley said. “They hacked them. They stabbed them. They cut them apart.”

At one point, Hinckley held up the large machete, which is shaped like a pirate’s sword, to the jurors before placing it on a table in front of them. He also showed them a picture of the Cates family — David,Kimberly and Jaimie.

It was a few minutes of unrelenting terror as the mother and child screamed and fought to stay alive. Kimberly Cates, 42, was struck more than 30 times, stabbed about a dozen times. The blows were struck with such force that two broke her skull and sunk into her brain, one went through the bone in her arm, Hinckley said during opening arguments of the trial.

“And Kimberly Cates was alive when she suffered each of those unimaginable wounds,” he said.

Despite her mother’s attempts to save her, Jaimie Cates wasn’t spared, Hinkley said. She suffered a cracked skull, fractured elbow, punctured lung and partially amputated foot, along with stabs and long slashes of varying depths from head to toe.

David Cates was in the courtroom Tuesday along with friends and family. The area behind Spader was also filled with people Tuesday.

At one point during the attack, Jaimie jumped from the bed into Christopher Gribble’s arms, Hinckley said, and was thrown into a sliding glass door where she collapsed and pretended to be dead. But Spader wasn’t through, Hinckley said.

“He took his machete and he hacked at her one last time, splitting open her head, but Jaimie didn’t move. She didn’t make a sound,” he said.

Gribble had already cut Kimberly Cates’ throat, Hinckley said, killing her.

Spader, and the three men with him, Gribble, William Marks and Quinn Glover, afterward stole jewelry from the home that was later pawned in Nashua for about $130, Hinckley said.

When they were gone, Jaimie Cates managed to crawl out of the bedroom, past Kimberly Cates’ body and find a phone. She called 911, Hinckley said.

After, Spader and Gribble couldn’t contain themselves. They talked about how it would be on the news and told friends and even acquaintances about the murder, showing some people the murder weapons, Hinckley said.

After reading on The Telegraph website that Jaimie Cates had survived, Spader teased Gribble, saying, “At least I killed my bitch,” Hinckley said.

“They couldn’t keep quiet about their crimes,” he said. “No remorse. No regret. No mercy. In the end, they could not stop talking and bragging about what they did, and they certainly weren’t as smart as they thought they were.”

Hinckley also read a poem he said Spader wrote after the murder that included simplistic rhymes and details Hinckley said were based on the Trow Road attack. It was signed by Spader.

“They were cold-blooded and calculating crimes that he had planned for days,” Hinckley said. “It was nothing less than the first-degree murder of Kimberly Cates and the attempted murder of Jaimie Cates. Nothing. Less.”

Andrew Winters, Spader’s defense attorney, focused on what the jury has to do and what the state has to prove.

“After you have heard all the evidence, you will conclude that it just doesn’t add up. It just doesn’t make sense that this happened the way the state says it did,” Winters said.

He said the state’s star witnesses – Marks, Glover and Autumn Savoy – have cut deals with the state and are pushing the blame onto Spader to save themselves as much prison time as possible. Their stories have changed, sometimes more than once, since they were first questioned, he said.

“These witnesses have cut a deal. They’ve done something terribly wrong, and they’ve cut a deal with the prosecutors,” Winters said.

He said Marks was heard telling his girlfriend that his knife was “destined for big things.” Glover posted a picture on the Internet of himself with an ax and police found a samurai sword in his room, Winters said.

Spader was known to brag to his friends a lot and tell lies to make himself look “tough,” Winters said.

Finally, Winters said despite the physical evidence the state says it found, including clothes and shoes pulled from the Nashua River and samples taken from inside the Cates home, none of it has blood, or hair or DNA that places Spader at the scene.

“You must weigh all the evidence carefully and hold the state to its burden of proving these charges beyond a reasonable doubt,” Winters said.

The morning didn’t get any less dramatic when one of the first witnesses, Milford police Sgt. Kevin Furlong, took the stand. Furlong was the first officer to arrive at the Cates home.

He said he saw Jaimie through the front window and immediately busted down the front door – damaging his shoulder badly enough that he later required surgery.

Jaimie Cates was trying to scream, he said, but no sound was coming out. When he got close to her, he said he could notice her broken jaw and she was able to whisper that she thought her mommy was dead, Furlong said.

He carried Jaimie Cates outside where she asked him not to leave her, but he went back inside, gun and flashlight drawn, and found Kimberly Cates in her bed, hacked and slashed to death, he said.

Jurors also heard from Dr. Amir Taghinia, a plastic surgeon at Boston Children’s Hospital. He was one of several surgeons who operated on Jaimie Cates over several hours after the attack.

Taghinia showed the jury a half dozen photos of Jamie Cates’ injuries and explained them in painstaking detail. Taghinia held the pictures facing the jury, away from the gallery where David Cates was sitting.

Taghinia said a sharp, heavy weapon wielded with “considerable” force would have been necessary to inflict a number of the wounds, including to Jaimie Cates’ forehead, thigh, side, cheek, foot and elbow.

There were a number of other wounds that a large, heavy weapon could not have created, he said. Those wounds came from a smaller weapon like a paring knife used in a jabbing, stabbing motion, he said.

Taghinia said he had hoped to re-attach the piece of foot that had been cut off but was unable to. Instead, he used it as a skin graft for the foot. Jaimie Cates can walk on and use the foot, he said, but it will always affect her physical activity, he said.

“They will all scar,” he said of the wounds.

State trooper Gerard Ditolia testified that he stayed with Jaimie Cates as she was brought by ambulance to a Nashua hospital and then transferred to Boston.

He said she told him she was awakend by her mother screaming and someone started whacking her with what she thought was a bat. She gave Ditolia a minimal description of the men she saw, including that one was tall and bald and was wearing a blue sweatshirt and the other was shorter.

Prosecutors played the brief 911 call Jaimie Cates made while they were questioning John Letson, a supervisor at the state’s 911 call center. The call was difficult to understand in the courtroom until the 911 operator relays to local police that a home invasion and robbery were reported in Mont Vernon.

Prosecutors also talked to a New Hampshire Union Leader delivery manager named Roy DeGrandpre, who saw a car on Trow Road a little after 4 that morning as he was delivering papers. They also called other early responders, including Milford police officers Eric Wales and Dean Hardwick, and state troopers Michael Kokoski and John Encarnacao.

Wales and Hardwick worked together to search the area around the home with a K-9 Zed. Both testified that they found fresh footprints in the dewy grass near the house and tire tracks on Trow Road south of the Cates home and in a small turnoff area in front of an old barn.

Kokoski testified about the evidence he helped collect at the house, including a basement window Gribble allegedly broke to try to get in the home, plus blood samples from several places inside the house.

Encarnacao is a lead investigator in the State Police Major Crimes Unit. He said he found Spader, Gribble and Autumn Savoy at Spader’s house in Mont Vernon the next day after police had interviewed people who had come forward with information about the case.

When Winters cross-examined him, Encarnacao said Spader and Gribble both agreed to answer questions voluntarily and didn’t seem overly nervous.

Spader faces life in prison with parole if convicted. Gribble is facing identical charges and is scheduled to stand trial in February.

Joseph G. Cote can be reached at 594-6415 or jcote@nashuatelegraph.com.