Suffolk prosecutor spars with mother of Thomas Liming during murder trial

A Suffolk prosecutor accused the mother of an Islip man of perjuring herself Tuesday during her son's trial on a charge of killing a high school friend four years ago.

During her second day on the witness stand before state Supreme Court Justice Mark Cohen, Kim Liming denied lying two years ago to the grand jury that ultimately charged her son Thomas, now 23, with second-degree murder in the death of Kyle Underhill, 18, on Nov. 16, 2011.

Underhill was bludgeoned, strangled and buried alive. Liming's defense is that he killed Underhill while fending off an attack after the two young men walked into the swampy Islip woods.

During often tense cross-examination in Riverhead by Assistant District Attorney Raphael Pearl, Kim Liming acknowledged she was calling her son's friends that night, trying to find him because she didn't know where he was.

She acknowledged that after he came home at about 8:20 p.m. she made more than a dozen calls to her brother, husband, a cousin and others before calling Suffolk police at 9:15 p.m. to report her son had been attacked by Underhill.

"It's not unusual for these calls," she told Pearl. "We do call each other."

When Pearl pressed her, she conceded she was scared and wanted advice about what to do. After she reached a criminal defense attorney, she halted the interview of her son by the officer she had called for.

She said that when she first saw her son after he returned home, his face was red and swollen and "his nose was off." Pearl confronted her with her prior grand jury testimony, in which she denied seeing anything wrong with her son's nose and mentioned no other injuries.

She conceded Tuesday that her son had no broken bones, bleeding, cuts or scrapes.

An autopsy showed Underhill was hit at least 15 times in the head with a blunt object, causing his brain to bleed. He was strangled hard enough to break cartilage in his neck, and two sticks were jammed in his mouth before he was buried alive in a watery hole.

Later, she said she and her family left home that night to stay with her brother in Farmingville the next two days. Pearl noted she told the grand jury they remained home then.

"It's my brother's house. I was with my children," Kim Liming said, explaining what she meant by "home."

"Isn't it true you just lied in the grand jury?" Pearl asked her.

"No, I don't think so," she replied. "They weren't very specific in their questions."

On the other hand, she testified Tuesday during questioning by defense attorney Joseph Corozzo of Manhattan, her son was quite clear about what happened in the woods.

"He said he was attacked and he was in fear of his life, and it was bad," she said.