Syracuse, NY -- It may be one of the more unusual murder scenes in recent Central New York history: someone covered up the stabbing and beating death of Jacob Giarrusso by pouring his grandmother’s home-cooked chili across the crime scene.

Giarrusso, 25, of Salina, was found dead three days later, stuffed in his own car trunk, after being bludgeoned and stabbed seven times, a knife stolen from his grandmother’s kitchen breaking off in his back, police said.

His buddy and co-worker, Jacob Stanton, 26, is facing trial this week in Giarrusso’s November 2017 murder. Giarrusso’s body was found in his abandoned car at the Brookwood on the Green apartment complex, off Morgan Road.

Jacob Stanton

Both sides agree that Giarrusso was murdered inside his grandmother’s Sunflower Drive home near the village of Liverpool.

Whoever killed Giarrusso left a mess.

The killer struck Giarrusso with a blunt object, cracking his skull, before stabbing him seven times. There was shattered glass, broken items and blood everywhere, defense lawyer David Hammond noted.

“Something incredibly violent happened,” he said.

After trying to clean up, the killer then grabbed grandmother’s chili and threw it across the floor, both sides agree.

Prosecutor Michael Whalen began his narrative to the jury by talking about the grandmother’s chili. She had been cooking it that afternoon before heading off to work, he said.

By then, Giarrusso and Stanton had arrived at her house. And she left them around 4:45 p.m., telling Giarrusso that he could add spices to the chili and eat it.

When the grandmother returned that night, her grandson was missing. And there was chili thrown across the living room.

Police first responded as a missing person case. After taking a report, the deputies left and told the grandmother she could clean up, Whalen told the jury.

That’s when she made a chilling discovery: when she poured baking soda on the chili stains, something else came to the surface, Whalen said.

“It’s not chili stains,” Whalen said. “It’s a different color. It’s blood.”

While grandmother was cleaning up, Stanton called the house. “Why are you throwing me under the bus?” he asked her, according to the prosecutor.

That was before anyone had suggested it was a homicide, the prosecutor noted.

“The only person who knew there was a bus to be thrown under was the man who had something to do with it," Whalen argued.

Police came back and did a further investigation. They found droplets of blood on the walls, ceiling and furniture. It belonged to Giarrusso.

The investigation began by questioning the last person seen with the victim: Stanton.

And Whalen spent the bulk of his opening statements Thursday morning going over what he called incriminating inconsistencies in Stanton’s repeated explanations of what he knew.

Authorities found out that Giarrusso had a substance problem, and Stanton admitted to drug deals with the victim. Stanton’s lawyer went even further, telling the jury that Giarrusso was a known drug dealer who used his grandmother’s house to sell.

Gairrusso’s grandmother later found a drug stash in a Santa Claus cookie jar on her kitchen counter, Hammond said.

In any case, Stanton spoke to police and then testified before a grand jury about the night of Giarrusso’s death. In short, Stanton claims that Giarrusso dropped him off at home that evening and Stanton doesn’t know what happened after that.

But Whalen noted that Stanton repeatedly denied driving Giarrusso’s car, despite the fact Stanton’s DNA was found on the steering wheel at the same location as a blood spot.

When confronted, Stanton said that he had “reparked,” or moved, the car, but hadn’t actually driven it. Whalen called that splitting hairs in a way that allowed Stanton to change his testimony to fit the facts.

Whalen also noted that Stanton admitted making up details about him and Giarrusso going to Valley Drive to do a job they found on Craigslist. Stanton later said that he didn’t want his girlfriend to find out that he hadn’t been working. But at a different point, Stanton said that he’d been working the entire week prior (the Valley Drive job would have been on a Saturday).

Not only that, but when questioned later at grand jury, Stanton testified that he didn’t want his parole officer to know he’d been skipping work, Whalen said, arguing the defendant couldn’t keep his story straight. (Stanton spent about 2 1/2 years in prison for robbery before being paroled in February 2016.)

There was also Stanton’s DNA on items in the trunk with Giarrusso’s body, the prosecutor said.

DNA testing of the murder weapon led to confusing results that led defense lawyers to argue the indictment should be tossed, while prosecutors argued the results pointed to Stanton’s guilt.

In the end, both sides agreed to simply tell the jury that DNA testing of the knife handle was “inconclusive.”

Hammond noted that no one saw Stanton commit the crime and nothing directly tied him to the scene. He dismissed Stanton’s inconsistencies in statements to authorities playing a game of “Stump the Chump.”

In regards to the DNA, the defense lawyer noted that “the two Jakes” were friends. Stanton had been in Giarrusso’s grandmother’s house countless times, as well as in the victim’s car. The blood on the steering wheel wasn’t necessarily Stanton’s, co-defense lawyer Ed Klein has argued.

Hammond said the two friends had decided to go to the Inner Harbor to smoke marijuana before heading to The End Zone bar in Liverpool for drinks. They then headed to Giarrusso’s grandmother’s house to hang out and play video games.

Grandmother left the house around 4:45 p.m. after leaving the chili simmering. By 5:35 p.m., evidence shows Giarrusso’s car leaving the neighborhood.

It doesn’t add up that Stanton would have flown into such a rage that he killed Giarrusso and loaded his body into the trunk within that 50-minute period, Hammond argued.

Giarrusso’s phone went dead at 5:45 p.m.

The defense lawyer suggested, but did not say, that Giarrusso might have been killed by someone else in the drug trade.

The prosecution began calling witnesses in Stanton’s trial Thursday morning.