http://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Mero-told-police-I-d-put-me-in-handcuffs-12422911.php
Mero told police: 'I'd put me in handcuffs'
Published 7:38 pm, Monday, December 11, 2017
ALBANY – Edward "Ted" Mero told police he would arrest himself for the murder of Shelby Countermine if he was in their position, a video played at his double-murder trial revealed Monday.
"What would you do if you were me?" an investigator asked Mero during the May 21, 2015 interrogation at State Police headquarters in Latham.
"I'd put me in handcuffs," Mero replied.
Asked why he would say that, Mero responded: "You think I'm lying to you. I was the last one to see her alive. She was found on water department property."
Mero also said: "Right now, the way it looks, I'm looking pretty good for it."
Mero, 30, denied having anything to do with the killing, but also said at one point, "I don't think I killed her."
At another point, he said: " I don't think I did anything wrong. In my mind, I haven't done anything wrong."
Mero is on trial in Albany County Court charged with the murders of Countermine on Dec. 3, 2014 and his roommate Megan Cunningham, 23, who died Jan. 27, 2013 in a fire in the home she shared with Mero on Arcadia Avenue in Albany.
The video was played during the testimony of State Police Investigator Robert Martin, who along with Coeymans police Investigator Jason Albert interviewed Mero one week after the body of the Countermine, 23, was found in a remote section of Coeymans.
A jogger discovered the remains by a water pipeline used by the Albany Water Department, where Mero worked and which he told police accessible to only a "handful" of people. Mero acknowledges that on the day Countermine disappeared, he was with her at his parents home in Albany where they were supposed to have a five-hour prostitution "date."
He said he kicked Countermine out of the house and threatened to call the police on her because he said she was snorting drugs off a photo of his grandmother.
Mero told police he had "no idea" how the body of Shelby Countermine turned up in the remote woods of Coeymans, where he grew up.
But Mero had some theories about what could have happened to her.
"Maybe she got picked up by somebody that lives out that way after she left my house," Mero told Martin and Albert. "Or maybe she took a bus somewhere and got picked up by somebody else. I don't know exactly. Something happened where she met up with someone who lived out there that knows that area pretty well and tried to dump the body out there."
When police asked Mero if he had any questions, he quickly had one.
"Am I on the top of the suspect list?" he asked. "My first question. Are there any other suspects you're looking at or am I the only one right now?"
One of the investigators responded: "I'll say, she was last seen at your house, OK, and she turned up on property owned by your employer."
The trial continues at 10:30 a.m. Martin is still testifying.
