|
|
 |
||||||
 |
Testimony Defense hopes to block evidence in King trial WAYNESVILLE, Mo. — When Richard Reyes asked the driver of a maroon Dodge Dakota for identification, the driver with close-cropped hair handed him a Texas Department of Agriculture pesticide license bearing the name Brian Conrad. The first problem was that Conrad and his family had been shot in their rural Gray County home south of Pampa earlier that day. The second problem was that the four-door crew cab pickup belonged to Orlie McCool, 70, who was murdered the day before Reyes stopped the pickup on the Bridge of the Americas in El Paso. It was about 9:15 p.m., Friday, Sept. 30, 2005, when Reyes, a Border Protection Officer at the time, asked the driver, later identified as Levi A. King, now 25, who was coming into the United States from Mexico, if he had anything to declare or if he had any guns in the vehicle. No, King said, he didn't have anything to declare. Yes, King said, he had a pistol in the console between the driver's and passenger's seats in the pickup. Reyes called for backup, ordered the driver to put both hands outside the window and put restraints on the driver's wrists. King was put in a holding cell at the border and the truck was searched. Mark Parsons, then a canine handler for Homeland Security, brought his Golden Labrador Retriever, Lussi, to the truck to search for drugs. Trying to move some Mexican blankets on the back seat so Lussi could get there, Parsons felt something hard. Sandwiched between the blankets were an AK-47 assault rifle and an Eastern European bolt-action rifle. Officers also found a .380 automatic pistol and a 9 mm automatic pistol. King faces capital murder charges in Missouri for the shooting deaths of Orlie McCool and his daughter-in-law Dawn Burr McCool, 47. He also faces capital murder charges in Gray County for the deaths of Brian Conrad, 31; his pregnant wife, Michell Conrad, 35; and her son, Zach Doan. At a hearing this week in Waynesville, Mo., King's lawyers are asking Circuit Court Judge John Clayton to suppress evidence in the case because of procedural actions by law enforcement officers in El Paso. Part of the evidence is missing, including the Texas Department of Agriculture pesticide license that King handed Reyes on the bridge. King's attorney's, Missouri Public Defenders Charles Moreland and Tom Marshall, also question whether King was advised of his rights. On Monday, Special Prosecutor Tim Finnical paraded three federal agents and two El Paso detectives before the court. Wednesday is expected to bring McDonald County officers from Pineville, Mo., where the McCools were killed. The case has been moved to Pulaski County, Mo., on a change of venue. The federal agents all testified that just because a person is detained at the border and his vehicle searched, he is not under arrest. Reyes said he handcuffed King and turned him over to other federal officers, who locked King in a holding cell at the bridge. Parsons said he never talked to King. Ted Klein, an immigration customs enforcement (ICE) agent, said that when he checked the national crime computer and found warrants on King, charging him with stealing a pickup and with the McCool murders in Missouri, he called the El Paso Police Department. "I never questioned King," Klein said. The federal officers testified that they took only biographical information from King. They each denied that they interrogated him about the murders. El Paso Detectives Gonzalo Chavarria and Joe Baca each testified that they arrived at the bridge about midnight and that King was taken from the bridge to a holding cell at police headquarters by a patrol unit. Chavarria was the first to tell King he was under arrest for the murders of the McCools. Baca, Chavarria's partner, read King his rights and had him sign a card saying he understood and waived those rights. That was about 2:50 a.m., Oct. 1, 2005. "We talked at length," Chavarria testified Monday. Chavarria said that at first King denied any involvement in the murders, but as the veteran police detectives confronted him, he began making increasingly incriminating statements. At first, King denied everything. Then, he admitted knowledge. Then, he admitted some responsibility. "Eventually," Chavarria said, "he described how it occurred." Shortly after 6 a.m., King agreed to a video statement. Orlie McCool's son stood up and left the courtroom as the DVD began. On the video, Chavarria read King his rights. Orlie's grandson, Matt McCool, sitting with family and friends, watched as, over the next 40 minutes, King haltingly told the story of what happened Sept. 29, 2005. King told the officers how he had walked away from a halfway house in St. Louis, where he had been paroled after serving 17 months of a 14-year sentence for arson and burglary. He told the officers how he hitchhiked back to Pineville in the southwest corner of Missouri and lied to his father about being free. King was walking from his father's home to his mother's, he said on the DVD, when he went up to the McCool home to talk to them about some horses he'd seen that had gotten out. He said he made his way through the front door and about 15 feet into the house and was talking to Orlie McCool, when the older man made an attempt to escort King out of the house. King said he followed McCool's gaze to a pistol on a table near the front door. "I snapped," King said. King said he picked up the pistol. "I sprang for it," King said on the DVD. "I grabbed it. I fired it once." King said he then went halfway down the stairs of the two-level house and fired at Dawn McCool, who had an armful of groceries. "She fell over," King said, "but she was moaning and crying. I started firing until she stopped moaning." He grabbed keys to a Dodge Dakota pickup and left. "I got out of there," King told the officers. "I was scared. I didn't know what was going to happen to me." He told the officers that he didn't take anything from the house except for the gun. King said he went back to his father's house and used an ax to break into his father's gun case. He said he took a bolt-action rifle, a 9 mm pistol and an AK-47. He told Chavarria and Baca that he planned to flee to Mexico, but he wasn't thinking clearly. Once he crossed the border into Juarez, Mexico, King said he drove around a while and wanted to come back to the United States. King said he had about $200 from a job he'd had in St. Louis to buy gas, but he didn't have a driver's license or any kind of identification. E-mail
comments about this story Posted: January 31, 2008
|
|
