Man pleads guilty to armed home invasion after learning testimony from witnesses too scared to show up in court would be read into evidence

A Suffolk Superior Court judge last week sentenced Robert Heckstall to 7 to 8 years in state prison for his role in a 2014 armed home invasion on Maple Street in Roxbury - from which he was tracked both through an iPhone he stole and the GPS device he was wearing.

Heckstall had been scheduled to go to trial last week, but agreed to a plea deal after prosecutors said they would introduce the grand-jury testimony of several witnesses who had refused to testify at his trial after receiving "intimidating text messages" from an unknown person, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

Although defendants normally have the right to confront their accusers, the DA's office planned to have somebody read their grand-jury testimony under a 2005 Supreme Judicial Court ruling involving witnesses who had been threatened before trial. Prosecutors cited Heckstall's earlier conviction on witness intimidation in arguing for letting the testimony in.

Heckstall pleaded guilty to two counts of kidnapping and single counts of armed home invasion, armed and masked robbery, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and assault and battery.

The DA's office provided this account:

Had the case proceeded to trial, Pichardo would have presented evidence and testimony to prove that Heckstall was one of several assailants who took part in an armed home invasion on Maple Street in Roxbury on Jan. 28, 2014, during which two victims were held against their will for approximately two hours and one was beaten with a firearm. The assailants eventually fled with nearly $3,000 in cash and a cell phone.

The stolen cell phone was tracked to an Elm Hill Avenue apartment. Boston Police detectives responded to the location and activated an alarm on the stolen cell phone, which they could hear coming from inside the apartment upon entering. Heckstall, who was present, identified the phone as his own; a GPS monitoring device that he had been ordered to wear while serving as a condition of earlier probation placed him at the location of the home invasion at the time that it occurred, the evidence would have proved.