Episode 214: The Home Invasion of Dr. Eduardo Quesada
Dr. Eduardo Quesada is an incredibly kind and talented physician and anesthesiologist who worked at the pain management center through Elliot Hospital. In his work he gave patients compassionate and high quality care, and he was an asset to the hospital. Dr. Quesada joined the Elliot Hospital Pain Management Center in 2000 after years of experience as the Lakes Region General Hospital’s Pain Clinic’s medical director. He attended The University of Rochester for undergrad, then The University of Chicago for his graduate degree and graduated from The University of Kentucky College of Medicine. He completed a surgical internship at Barnes Hospital with Washington University in St. Louis and is board certified in both Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine by the American Board of Anesthesiology. He is also a diplomat of the American Board of Pain Medicine.
At the time of this incident, Dr. Quesada was living in Bedford, New Hampshire in a tucked away neighborhood in a beautiful mansion with his wife, 29-year-old Sonia Quesada and their child, a 2-year-old girl. Bedford, according to neighbors and community members, is a place that is seen as incredibly safe and where nothing bad or dangerous really happens. This all changed when on November 24th, 2012, police officers responded to a robbery in progress at 7 Proclamation Court in Bedford. Once on the scene, police found 52-year-old Dr. Eduardo Quesada and his wife Sonia critically injured and their home ransacked. The couple’s 2-year-old daughter was thankfully unharmed. Sonia was able to escape the attack and fled to a neighbor’s home covered in blood. She was able to get help and the neighbors called police. When police got to Eduardo, they found him so badly beaten that they thought he was dead.
The family was returning home on that Saturday evening from the movies when they arrived home and interrupted a robbery turned home invasion and brutal assault. After the attacks, police began desperately trying to figure out who was responsible with little information and leads. In January, about six weeks after the home invasion and attacks on Eduardo and his wife, police received a crucial tip from a confidential informant who had been involved. Bedford’s Chief of Police Chief John Bryfonski was made aware through this tip of 33-year-old Charles Normil of Lawrence, Massachusetts, who invaded the home and attacked the couple with an accomplice.
In a press conference, Chief Bryfonski stated, “Dr. Quesada was stabbed in the head multiple times with a screwdriver, resulting in facial fractures, lacerations and brain injury. Mrs. Quesada was sexually and physically assaulted which resulted in the loss of sight in her left eye amongst other serious injuries.”
This was nowhere near Charles’ first run-in with the law or even his first home invasion. In 2010, Charles and a friend broke into and burglarized multiple houses in Rye, New Hampshire, with both men being sentenced to three and a half years to seven years in prison. Charles was released prior to even the minimum three and a half year mark and was right back to breaking into homes once out of prison.
Over 200 pages of documents related to the investigation were released in early 2013, and while there wasn’t mention of a second burglar in the home invasion, the informant who tipped off police about Charles also knew of a man who may have helped Charles attack the Quesadas. The documents show that police received the tip on January 7th, and within hours police from Bedford as well as New Hampshire state police traveled down to Methuen, Massachusetts to interview the informant about Charles. The informant shared that the second suspect in the home invasion said he and Charles invaded a home “on Route 101 or Route 102 in New Hampshire, in which a female subject had been sexually assaulted.” The second man told the informant that he and Charles Normil used his black 1999 Nissan Maxima to drive to and from the Bedford home, which police learned was the same car used in another home invasion in Methuen, and that he was nervous police would identify the car due to media reports that police identified tire tread marks at the scene.
These documents also include the 911 call from the neighbor that Sonia was able to run to for help, who said on the call that a woman “covered in blood” was banging on her door. When police arrived, the neighbor told them that Sonia was crying and hysterical, saying that her husband had been murdered. Officer Michael Cherwin was the first to arrive on scene and Sonia, who was “heavily covered in blood” with “severe facial injuries and bruising,” ran up to his cruiser. She was screaming for her baby and told him that they killed her husband. As police tried to calm her down, she was able to tell them that the attacker was wearing a ski mask to hide his identity, but she was able to report that he was tall and a black male.
Sonia said that she was attacked in the area of the laundry room of her house, then knocked to the floor. Once on the floor she saw that her husband was nearby and also lying on the floor. The attacker asked him where the safe was, but when Eduardo said that they didn’t have one, she saw the attacker yell out to someone else that they didn’t have a safe. This was the only indication that there was a second person in the house as Sonia never saw or heard him. When police gained entry into the home, they saw a small “screwdriver-like” tool on the floor near Eduardo and saw blood splatter in the laundry room.
In early January, just before the tip came in about Charles Normil, police in Bedford found themselves forcing entry into an upscale condo occupied by Eduardo and Sonia. They had been called to the address, owned by Eduardo’s mother Norma, at around 10:00 a.m. on January 7th to do a wellness check. Once inside, police found Sonia and Eduardo both unresponsive. Eduardo was rushed to the hospital, but Sonia was found to be deceased. Surrounding both her body and Eduardo were a large amount of prescription medications. Little information has been released about the discovery during the wellness check and Sonia’s death.
During court proceedings for the trial in June of 2016, Eduardo said that when the attack first started he thought it was a dream. When he realized that an intruder was in the home and that he was standing face to face with him, Eduardo said while testifying, “It was the look of an empty man, a man without a soul. A savage animal in your house with a soulless stare and a foul smell will never leave my mind." Eduardo also shared that even years later he is physically, mentally and emotionally scarred from the home invasion. His balance is altered and he is deaf in one ear, and because of the permanent damage he has not been able to return to practicing medicine and will never be able to.
Charles Normil ended up being convicted on four counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault, two counts of first degree assault, two counts of second degree assault, one count of burglary, one count of conspiracy to commit burglary, and one count of falsifying physical evidence. He attempted to appeal these charges but remains in prison.
Image sources:
wcvb.com - “Search for evidence continues after violent Bedford attack”