Frick
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WILKES-BARRE — Luzerne County prosecutors continue to rely heavily on a Wayne County domestic violence case on the third day of trial involving homicide suspect Dana Ganjeh.
Ganjeh, 42, is facing a Luzerne County jury trial on an open count of criminal homicide alleging he fatally assaulted his “on-again, off-again” girlfriend Linda Frick, 52, whose body was found by Kingston police on Aug. 4, 2018. Her body was discovered covered with a blanket and towels inside Ganjeh’s Toyota Rav4 parked behind his residence at 71 Price St.
For the last three days, Deputy Assistant District Attorney Thomas Hogans and Assistant District Attorney Daniel Marsh have relied on the couple’s prior domestic incidents, including a case in April 2018 in Wayne County, against Ganjeh.
Ganjeh was jailed at the Wayne County Correctional Facility on charges he burglarized a house trailer near Gouldsboro, and assaulted Frick in a bedroom as she was retrieving belongings April 13, 2018.
While he was jailed, Ganjeh sent a letter and made many phone calls to his brother, Danesh Ganjeh, asking for his help in posting his bail, hiring an attorney and to get Frick and the house trailer renter, Dave Nace, to drop the charges.
Two recorded phone calls Ganjeh made from the Wayne County jail to his brother were played for the jury Thursday as Danesh Ganjeh was called to testify against his brother. In each phone call, Ganjeh begged his brother to bail him out, to contact Frick and Nace and persuade them to drop the charges, and to hire an attorney.
Danesh Ganjeh said he doesn’t have a close relationship with his brother but did reach out to Frick.
“I never offered her money,” Danesh Ganjeh said.
At one point during a phone call between the brothers, Danesh Ganjeh told Ganjeh not to call him again.
Danesh Ganjeh said Ganjeh would “blow up his phone,” to the point he blocked the number from the Wayne County Correctional Facility.
A series of text messages between Danesh Ganjeh and Frick were read to jurors Thursday morning. In several of the text messages, Frick is begging Danesh Ganjeh to find her identification card and Social Security card from Ganjeh’s apartment on Price Street. She also stated she is fearful of Ganjeh in one text stating, “I can’t live like this; he is out of control.”
Danesh Ganjeh, who said he never met Frick, sent Frick a text message advising to get a protection-from abuse order and to “stay away from Dana.”
Several days after Danesh Ganjeh advised Frick to stay away from his brother in a text message, he learned of her death after Ganjeh called him.
“He called me twice,” Danesh Ganjeh said of the events in the morning hours of Aug. 4, 2018. “It was brief, he was crying. He said I did something really bad. He said take care of mom. I asked him what did you do, and he said, you’ll find out.”
Danesh Ganjeh said he called 911 and went to his brother’s Price Street apartment encountering police at the scene.
“Everything seems to be centered on this Wayne County case,” Ganjeh’s attorney, Demetrius Fannick, said when he began cross-examining Danesh Ganjeh.
Earlier Thursday, Matthew Wild, a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, testified to cellular phone calls. Wild said he traced Ganjeh’s cell phone being used at cellular towers in Wayne County the night of Aug. 3, 2018, and a cellular tower near Kingston at 6:43 to 6:48 a.m. on Aug. 4, 2018.
Hogans and Marsh believe Ganjeh went to the Wayne County residence where they suspect Frick was initially assaulted before being driven to Kingston.
The trial continues Thursday afternoon.