BRATTLEBORO -- Emmy Bascom's life was in a state of change in the last year of her life, a longtime friend testified Tuesday.

Jennifer Sargent of Putney said that she spent the last night of Bascom's life with her, when she invited her troubled friend to come have a dinner of macaroni and cheese and bacon at her house on Aug. 7 , 2022, and get caught up.

There were times, she said, when Bascom was "down and depressed." Ordinarily, she was very outgoing, and very friendly, Sargent said. "She got along with everybody."

"We were pretty close," she said. When she and her husband started having issues, Bascom stayed at her house "a lot."

Sargent said that she and Bascom, 42, had used drugs together in the past, usually cocaine, about twice a week, and she would often visit Bascom at the Circle K gas station in Brattleboro, where she worked. It was easy to get drugs at the Circle K, she said.

They had been seeing less of each other in recent months because Bascom was seeing a new man, Alex Kelley, Sargent told the jury Tuesday morning during the murder trial of Cara Rodrigues, 33, of Wardsboro, who is charged with stabbing and beating Bascom to death.

Sargent said she didn't like Kelley. "I knew of him and I didn't like him," Sargent said, while saying she never bought drugs from him. Bascom was separated from her husband, Brian Johnston of Guilford. "Her and her husband were having issues," said Sargent, who said at the time of Bascom's death she was known as Jenna Hescock.

Sargent said the two women were texting and Facebook messaging back and forth that night after Bascom left her Putney home around 11:30 p.m. to pick up "Lady," which is what Bascom called Rodrigues.

Sargent said that "Lady" called Bascom that night while Bascom was at her home, and asked that Bascom pick her up at Great River Terrace, a housing project on Putney Road.

Great River Terrace, Sargent said, had a terrible reputation for violence and drug sales, and Bascom was apprehensive about going there. "She was all over the place," Sargent said of Bascom, who recalled her friend asked her "to keep track of me."

There were a lot of dangerous people at Great River Terrace, and a lot of drug use and trafficking, Sargent said.

Bascom asked her friend Sargent to monitor her via her Facebook tracker to keep track of her, and the two women were in constant contact -- even when Rodrigues overdosed about an hour later with a white powder later identified as fentanyl.

Sargent said that Bascom told her that Rodrigues deliberately tried to kill herself.

Bascom was frantic and very upset when Rodrigues overdosed and before Brattleboro police were able to finally revive her with Narcan and CPR, Sargent said.

After Rodrigues' overdose, Sargent said she only once got one more message from her friend.

Also testifying Tuesday was Amy Doyle, Rodrigues' cousin who gave her a place to live in Wardsboro during the winter of 2021-22, when Rodrigues was all but homeless.

Doyle said she gave Rodrigues some rules if she was going to live with Doyle and her boyfriend, Michael Mercier, in Wardsboro, including not using drugs at her house, and not bringing her friends to the house.

One time she overdosed at the home, Doyle said, but she decided to give her cousin a second chance.

Also testifying Tuesday were two chemists from the Vermont Forensic Laboratory in Waterbury. Joseph Abraham, who did the blood and DNA analysis for the case, said that both Bascom and Rodrigues' blood was found on two items, but that many of the items he tested showed either one or the other women.

A folding knife, found in the mud of a drained beaver pond in the vicinity of where Bascom's body was found, only contained the DNA of the man, David Goddard, who found it and turned it over to police a year after the Aug. 8, 2022 murder.

The two items that contained both women's blood and DNA included a black wagon, owned by Rodrigues' cousin Doyle, which she had borrowed to transport what she claimed was a deer carcass, which turned out to be Bascom's body.

The other mix of blood was on a handle.

Abraham, under cross examination by Rodrigues' attorney, Daniel Sedon, said that the laboratory was limited in what it could and did test.

For example, he said, the state police never submitted to his lab to test any of the 22 swabs they took of the blood found on Bascom's vehicle, a silver Chevy Suburban.

Police believe that Bascom was killed elsewhere and not in her Chevy Suburban, and was driven to Wardsboro, where her body was found off a logging road, not far from Rodrigues' home with her cousin.

Contact Susan Smallheer at [email protected].