The defense began calling witnesses in the Bella Bond murder trial after the prosecution rested its case Friday, and new information suggests the 2-year-old girl could have been identified two weeks after her body was found.
Defense witness Nicole Marquis said she was a friend of Rachelle Bond, and had spent time with her daughter Bella.
Rachelle Bond's live-in boyfriend, Michael McCarthy, is charged with first-degree murder in the the young girl's death. Bond pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact to murder in February.
Trial Underway for Man Accused of Killing Bella Bond
Marquis testified that when the composite drawing of Bella Bond, who was then known only as "Baby Doe," was released in the summer of 2015 after the child's body was found on Deer Island, she thought the girl looked familiar.
She said on July 13, 2015, she took screen grabs of Bond's Facebook photos of Bella, compared them to "Baby Doe" drawings and called police.
"I had told them that I thought that 'Baby Doe' resembled a girl named Rachelle Bond's daughter Bella, but I wasn't sure of her last name - Bella's last name -because I wasn't sure if she had her father's last name or her mother's, and I wasn't sure where she lived," Marquis said Friday. "I just told them that Rachelle Bond had a Facebook and that you could see the picture on the Facebook."
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"Baby Doe" was eventually identified as Bella Bond after police received a tip in September 2015.
The judge said the defense is expected to rest on Monday and the jury will likely get the case on Tuesday.
