A jury is deciding whether Sarah Lynch staged a burglary at her Manchester home in 2019, as prosecutors maintain, or whether she was attacked and police botched the investigation by failing to collect all the evidence, dust for fingerprints or follow through on leads, as the defense contends.

Sarah Lynch, 42, former principal of Webster Elementary School in Manchester, took the stand in Hillsborough County Superior Court Northern District in her own defense on Tuesday, the second day of her trial on charges of falsifying physical evidence by staging a crime scene to deceive police and filing a false police report.

She explained what happened on Jan. 13, 2019, at her then home at 102 North Adams St.

Wednesday morning, she was back on the stand, being cross-examined by First Assistant Hillsborough County Attorney Shawn Sweeney.

Lynch talked with police on several occasions and Sweeny focused on discrepancies among them. Lynch said she was in her office that morning when she heard glass shattered. She came out of her office to come face-to-face with an intruder.

She said the two walked toward each other and he came at her, putting his fists against her neck. She grabbed a candle from the fireplace mantle and threw it at him, hitting him in the back. The intruder, who wore no gloves, then came at her and the two exchanged punches and fell to the floor.

She said the man grabbed a cord and wrapped it around her neck. She said she saw black spots, similar to what you see when you are going to faint but she thrust her head backward against her assailant who then fled the scene.

Sweeney, in questioning Lynch, noted that she told police at various times that the incident lasted from two to 15 minutes. Lynch said she said it “felt like” 15 minutes and that she said the incident lasted about “2 to 5 minutes.” She said she didn’t have a definitive time because she wasn’t wearing a watch.

Sweeney also noted that originally she didn’t know the color of the intruder’s hair – he was wearing a hat – but she testified he had brown hair. Lynch replied that she based that on the color of his facial hair.

She described the man as having hairy knuckles and under questioning by Sweeney, said she did not see any blood or scratches on his hands.

She said she wore only socks that day and while there were shards of glass in the foyer, from the broken window in the front door, she did not cut her feet.

At the hospital, a CAT scan was done of Lynch’s brain, neck and spine, results of which were deemed “unremarkable” by doctors, Sweeney said

The prosecution maintains that Lynch staged the burglary, that she used a bat to break a window in the front door and then tipped over furnishings and scattered her children’s toys around the living room before calling police.

The defense maintains Lynch was the victim of an intruder and that police failed to effectively investigate the crime. The baseball bat, attorneys say, was 27 years old with various dents and markings on it from being used for years up and down the East Coast.

Police maintained markings on the bat matched markings on the door casing where the window was broken.

However, attorney Anthony Sculimbrene, in his closing argument, said those markings were not on the bat when it was put into evidence at the trial. From the time of the incident to this week, he said the bat was in the possession of the Manchester Police Department.

“Sarah Lynch is guilty,” Assistant Hillsborough County Attorney Matthew Michael Livi said as he began his closing argument. He said if an intruder broke the glass in the door he still would have to reach in through the broken window to unlock the door.

He said there would be a “pretty good chance” he’d cut his hands. Yet, there was no blood on the door or in the home.

Lynch said she threw a candle at him – lobbed it like a softball – hitting the intruder in the back but, Livi said, “no blood.” Lynch is wearing socks, walking in the foyer with broken glass and is “lucky” she didn’t step on the glass and get cut.

“There’s no blood from the burglar and no blood from the defendant,” he told the jury.

He said what really happened is that Lynch took a baseball bat, swung it and broke the glass. Then she took the children’s toys, scattered them about the living room and turned over some furniture. “She made it look like there was a fight,” he said.

The incident took place in January and the burglar reportedly wore boots yet “he doesn’t leave a trace.” One set of footprints in the snow, he said, were identified by police as belonging to someone unconnected to the incident.

Police, however, recover a small shard of glass by the defendant’s baseball bat in her office.

He also said there was no video footage captured that day from neighboring properties of anyone breaking into her home.

Sculimbrene, in his closing argument, said lead investigator Scott Ardita admitted he lied to Lynch in questioning her because he wanted to trick her into confessing.

He took a shot at Ardita’s investigative skills, telling the jurors that if any one of them picked up the baseball bat during deliberation “you would have spent more time on it than the lead investigator.”

He also told them that, according to officers’ testimony, 20 officers walked through the home that day, including through the broken glass.

“There was a parade of people walking through” the crime scene, he said.

He pointed out that the house is 100 years old and that there are going to be marks on the door, especially in a home with young kids and pets.

Police maintained marks on the baseball bat matched marks on the door. “The marks on the bat are gone – gone.”

He said a video of the police interview, which was played for the jury, is “an example of what happens when you confront an honest person with lies.”

Police exploited a mental disability resulting in Lynch questioning herself. She told the investigators she was feeling like she was having a “mental f------ breakdown.”

Ardita, he said, battered Lynch because he wanted her to confess and she said, “I’m not lying. She’s not lying. The break-in actually happened.”

Sculimbrene also pointed to mistakes police made in the investigation: Police never dusted the cord for fingerprints; a rake or shovel, which were on the porch – something known because of photographs taken by police – could have been used to break the window but they the tools were not taken into evidence or dusted for fingerprints; investigators never followed up with neighbors; they didn’t look into a report of a car speeding about 60 miles an hour two blocks away about the time of the reported break-in; while police got Lynch’s medical records, Ardita and another detective never looked at them; Lynch had blood on her cheek, but no scratch, but police didn’t take a sample to see if it belonged to someone else.

“They totally ignored evidence, contaminated evidence or dismissed evidence,” Sculimbrene said.

Lynch’s injuries were documented at the hospital: a swollen cheek, abrasion to a finger and a ligature mark around her neck. She was given fentanyl for the pain.

Sculimbrene asked the jurors why would Lynch lie? Why would she subject her family to public and press scrutiny? “What is she going to get out of it?” he asked. “There’s no motive to lie.”

But, he said, police were under pressure to solve the incident because there was an unsolved murder in that nice neighborhood, he said.

Sculimbrene said the defense doesn’t have to prove anything, the state does and the defense doesn’t believe they did that.

“Sarah was telling the truth about all the things that happened,” he said. “Use your own judgment and you will find Sarah is not guilty.”

Lynch was terminated as principal in late 2018 for improper use of school funds and failure to follow the hiring protocol, according to court documents.

Jurors went home about 4 p.m. without reaching a verdict. They are to resume deliberations Friday.

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