MORGANTOWN – Joseph Nevera sat expressionless in a Monongalia County courtroom Monday afternoon while convenience store video surveillance of the woman he is accused of murdering was projected onto a screen.
It was Mother’s Day 2024, and Kim Osborne was in the process of breaking off their relationship for good.
That day was the last she was seen alive.
Skeletal remains of the 48-year-old Morgantown woman were discovered by a hunter in a shallow grave seven months later.
Investigators were able to determine that her nose had been broken and one of the vertebrae in her neck had been fractured.
A positive identification was made through a DNA match with her daughter, and authorities ruled Osborne’s death a homicide. Days later, police arrested Nevera, 52, also of Morgantown and charged him with first-degree murder.
Tuesday was the first day of testimony in his trial, which could go into next week.
“You aren’t going to hear evidence of a bloody crime scene,” Mon’s prosecuting attorney Gabrielle Mucciola told the jury.
“There’s no weapon. What this case is about, is a documented history of domestic violence,” she said.
Osborne did report Nevera to police once when, during an argument, the prosecutor said, Nevera put his hands on the woman’s neck – and strangled her to the point she lost consciousness.
The couple argued constantly by all accounts, and Nevera is known to have a temper, fueled in part by alcohol, his attorney Christopher Wilson said.
Wilson, though in his opening statement, alluded to Osborne’s alleged drug use and said she was seeing a married man while still living with Nevera – who had promised to pay her $2,000 while allowing to live rent-free for a year in a cabin he owned near River Road, should their relationship not work out.
She was in the process of moving into the cabin when she went missing.
Osborne was also driving a pickup truck owned by Nevera’s mother, Wilson said.
“May 12, 2024 is the day that brings us here today,” he said.
“But that’s not where the story ends,” he said. “This is a story about relationships.”
Meanwhile, Osborne’s mother just knows what she saw over the years, she said as she took the stand.
Once, in a fit of rage, during an argument with Kim, she watched as he repeatedly slammed his head against a wall, she said, under Mucciola’s questioning.
Other times, she was instructed on how to behave when she would come visit.
“She’d say, ‘Don’t say anything to Joe,’” the mother testified. “‘He’s in a bad mood.’”
Rose, in turn, tried to instruct her daughter – but it was to no avail, she said, her voice breaking.
“I said, ‘Honey, he’s going to hurt you some day.’”
