BEDFORD – About six weeks after the November 2012 violent home invasion that left a doctor and his wife seriously injured, a confidential informant passed along information that put investigators on the trail of the prime suspect, according to documents in the case released Wednesday by Merrimack District Court.

Charles Normil, a 33-year-old Massachusetts resident who was in jail at the time in connection with a similar home invasion in Methuen, Mass., was charged in April with a series of offenses including attempted murder, aggravated felonious sexual assault and first-degree assault for allegedly breaking into the million-
dollar Proclamation Court home of Dr. Eduardo Quesada, 53, and his now-deceased wife, Sonia, then 29, beating the couple and raping Sonia Quesada of Nov. 24.

Merrimack district court Judge Clifford Kinghorn ordered the documents, which include search warrant applications and testimony by police and witnesses, unsealed in response to a recent request by the New Hampshire Union Leader.

Nearly 200 pages, burned onto CDs by court officials and released to media Wednesday, trace the methodical investigation by several Bedford detectives, state police and Charles DeJesus, the Methuen detective to whom the informant gave the information.

The documents support wide speculation that the Quesadas were surprised by a large, dark-skinned male, later identified as Normil, and violently assaulted.

There is no direct mention in the documents of a possible second suspect in the invasion, but it appears that the confidential informant who tipped DeJesus was well acquainted with a man who may have played that role.

The informant also told police he knows Normil, and that he and a second confidential informant fear for their safety because they have knowledge of many of Normil’s alleged crimes.

All informant and suspect names except Normil’s are redacted, but the documents reveal that the informant tipped DeJesus on Jan. 7, and later that night, detectives from Bedford and state police traveled to Methuen to interview the informant and a female companion at a Methuen residence.

There, the informant told police the man who allegedly worked in concert with Normil in the Bedford invasion said he was involved in an invasion “on Route 101, or Route 102, in New Hampshire, in which a female subject had been sexually assaulted,” documents state.

The man also told the informant he participated with Normil, and that they used the man’s 1999 black Nissan Maxima to drive to and from the invasion.

Police also learned that the same Maxima also was used in the Methuen home invasion. The informant said he’d ridden in the Maxima since the invasion, and that the man told him he was worried over media reports that police had identified tire impressions at the spot where he’d allegedly parked the Maxima outside the Quesada house.

The final pages of the document file show that Bedford police seized, and are apparently still holding, a 2004 Mitsubishi SUV belonging to Milford resident Leah Mead, who police identify as a girlfriend of Charles Normil.

Police state in documents that they interviewed Mead on Jan. 18, and she told them she let Normil borrow her vehicle several times in November 2012, including the night when the invasion occurred. That night, Mead told police, Normil went out with an individual whose name is redacted from the documents and returned late, while she was sleeping.

Police grew more suspicious when they learned Normil had cleaned the vehicle’s interior within days of the invasion, documents state.

Bedford detective Sgt. Michael Monahan, one of the lead investigators in the case, stated in one of many search warrant applications that police received the call that night from a Janice Manno, of 3 Proclamation Court, who told police a female, who was “covered in blood,” was banging on Manno’s front door.

The woman, later identified as Sonia Quesada and frequently referred to in the documents as Sonia Varela, was crying and hysterical, Manno told police, and said that someone had “murdered” her husband.

The first arriving officer, Michael Cherwin, stated in reports that when he pulled up to 3 Proclamation Court, a female, whom he noticed was “heavily covered in blood” and had “severe facial injuries and bruising,” ran up to his cruiser.

The woman, Sonia Quesada, was “crying hysterically,” Cherwin said, and when he asked her what happened, “she yelled, ‘my baby, my baby,’?” according to the documents. As he tried to calm her, Cherwin said Quesada told him “they killed my husband.”

As more local and state police officers arrived to secure the scene, check for suspects and enter the house, other officers questioned Sonia Quesada about the circumstances and the suspect.

Each time, according to the documents, she said she could only describe him as a black male with a ski mask. She told police she was attacked in the area of the laundry room of her house, then knocked to the floor, at which time she noticed her husband was nearby also lying on the floor.

The suspect then asked where the safe was, but when her husband told him they had no safe, he “became angry” and yelled to someone she did not see that there was no safe in the house.

Sonia Quesada told police she didn’t see or hear a second suspect in the house.

As the suspect assaulted them, she told police he told her not to look and to be quiet.

She told police she “knew she had to escape” and was able to, running out through the garage as she believed the suspect was still in the kitchen.

Multiple police units then surrounded the house, the reports state, and after ascertaining no suspects were present, entered the home at about 11:45 p.m. and found Eduardo Quesada on the floor in a pool of blood.

Minutes later officers located the couple’s 2-year-old child, Sophia, when Sgt. Phillip Mahoney heard crying at the top of the main stairway

Mahoney and other officers stated they noticed a small “screwdriver-like” tool on the floor near Eduardo Quesada, and noticed what appeared to be blood splatter in the laundry room.

The multiple search warrants contained in the documents seek dozens of items, including any tools, computer equipment, cell phones, video surveillance equipment and clothing, along with blood, DNA materials, latent fingerprints and hair fragments.

Investigators state that dozens of items were removed from the home for inspection. They also sought and received data and “detailed billing information” from the couple’s cell phones.

The case took a major twist in January, when Sonia Quesada was found dead in the Bedford condo the two were living in. Eduardo Quesada was unconscious, but survived after being rushed to the hospital.

Police have maintained the two incidents aren’t connected.

Dean Shalhoup can be reached at 594-6443 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com. Also, follow Shalhoup on Twitter (@Telegraph_DeanS).