NORTHAMPTON — With the firearm used to kill Joseph R. Fillio never recovered by law enforcement, a photo on defendant Steven J. Malloy’s phone has become a key piece of evidence in his trial on the charge of first-degree murder.

A photo depicts a small gun, identified in Hampshire Superior Court Tuesday by Massachusetts State Police ballistician and firearms analyst Robert Patterson as a Ruger LCP semiautomic pistol with an ArmaLaser TR2 red laser sight. The gun in the photo matches a description given by Todd Wilchek, a witness who claims to have seen Malloy, 35, of Northampton, shoot and kill Fillio, 39, of Pittsfield, during a house party on Dec. 1, 2021, in Northampton. The gun in the photo is being held by a person with black nail polish and a distinctive turquoise thumb ring.

But exactly how the photo came to be on Malloy’s phone became a point for defense attorney Joseph Perullo, who has stated his client did not fire the gun and has hinted to the jury that Fillio had been suicidal before his death.

Josh Lemay, a detective with the Massachusetts State Police, and Steven Devlin, a deputy director at the Digital Evidence Lab of the Massachusetts attorney general’s office , took the stand to describe the extraction of data from Malloy’s smartphone as part of the investigation of the case. Lemay said he was able to gain access to part of the phone’s data, including photos, using a forensic tool called Magnet Graykey in November 2023.

Once the photo was obtained, an analysis was conducted on the photo’s metadata, containing additional information such as the date the photo was taken and the filename. Devlin said the photo had been found in the phone’s “Shared with You” folder, indicating that Malloy had not taken the photo himself, but rather it had been texted to him.

“It wasn’t taken by this phone,” Devlin said. “It was received by this phone, and the creation date in the file system is the date it arrives or is first stored on the phone.” Devlin said the timestamp on the photo was on Dec. 1 at 9:32 a.m., less than 24 hours before Fillio’s death.

Perullo asked Devlin if the metadata contained the Apple ID of the user who had sent the photo, with Devlin saying he was unable to get that information. Perullo also asked if it was possible to subpoena Apple to try and get another user’s Apple ID, with Devlin saying that it was.

On cross-examination of Lemay, Perullo also produced several photos of the bedroom in the apartment where the shooting took place in the kitchen and asked Lemay to identify several of the items in the room. Perullo asked about an item placed on top of a bottle of prescription medication and if it could be a “small white bag.” Lemay responded that it could be, and Perullo asked what small white bags are indicative of in his field of work, with Lemay responding it usually corresponded to narcotics.

The defense is scheduled to call a few more witnesses to the stand and is expected to rest its case on Wednesday. The case is expected to conclude this week.

Alexander MacDougall can be reached at amacdougall@gazettenet.com.