Posted on 04/14/2008 12:57:36 PM PDT by SmithL
Accused accessory to carjacking suspect Eric Dewayne "E" Boyd claims he has no personal knowledge of the slayings of a young couple, but he offered up details of the crime anyway in a videotaped statement to police.
In the interview with Knoxville Police Department Investigators Patty Tipton and Greg McKnight played today in U.S. District Court, Boyd insisted everything he knew about the fatal carjacking came from Lemaricus "Slim" Davidson, the alleged carjacking ringleader whom he is accused of helping to hide out.
According to Boyd, Davidson, his brother and a friend needed a vehicle because they were being pursued by drug dealers to whom they owed money.
He described the Jan. 7, 2007, encounter between the carjacking suspects and slain couple Channon Christian, 21, and Christopher Newsom, 23, as entirely random.
"They weren't able to carjack them, so they ordered them to drive," Boyd said in the statement.
"They just, I guess, a car was coming ... pushed them in right in the car because dude (Newsom) was giving girl (Christian) a kiss."
He denied being involved in the carjacking or being at the Chipman Street house following it.
Prior testimony has suggested Boyd was at the house while the couple was being held captive. He is not charged, however, in either the carjacking or the killings.
He admitted being at the Chipman Street house on Sunday when Christian was still alive. He denied seeing her or knowing she was there.
He said Davidson later explained, "They had her tied up in the back room."
He said that Davidson told him that his brother, Letalvis "Rome" Cobbins, and buddy, George "G" Thomas, gang-raped Christian.
Davidson, he said, denied raping Christian but admitted choking her. Boyd said Davidson pinned the killings on Thomas.
McKnight was skeptical.
"They had sex with her, but he choked and killed her. Does that make sense to you?" he asked Boyd in the videotaped interview.
"No, no it don't," Boyd responded.
Later in the interview, Boyd said Davidson admitted dousing Newsom with gasoline and setting his body on fire, which contradicted his earlier account that Thomas had led Newsom out of the house and shot him.
Boyd's account of his visit to the house on Sunday also proved replete with contradictions. At one point, he said he went into the living room where he could see Davidson's girlfriend in the kitchen.
He later tried to distance himself from the house, however, saying Davidson actually met him on the front porch.
Based on crime-scene photos, he would not have been able to see the kitchen from the front porch doorway.
Tipton and McKnight pressed him for an alibi. He intially insisted he could provide one with no problem. But when the investigators would seek specific information, including phone numbers or addresses for people he listed as alibi witnesses, he backed off his assertion that he could provide a specific alibi.
"Walking up and down main street of Ridgebrook, just drinking, smoking and drinking and smoking weed, that's all I do every day," he said.
"I may go to Labor Ready occasionally so I can get a little more buzz money."
Tipton was on the witness stand this morning and will face cross-examination by defense attorney Phil Lomonaco.
In testimony Friday, Davidson's former girlfriend, Daphne Sutton, said she suspected the man was a killer but slept with him anyway.
On the witness stand, she chalked it up to denial.
"I did not know for sure he killed somebody," Sutton testified. "It was kind of like I lied to myself about it. I didn't want to believe it."
It would take the discovery of two bodies - one inside the Chipman Street house where she and Davidson had lived - and Davidson's tales of the killings to finally prompt Sutton to rid herself of him, she told jurors.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys David Jennings and Tracy Stone allege Boyd knew about the fatal carjacking when he allegedly took steps to help Davidson avoid arrest. On Thursday, the pair presented surprise evidence suggesting that Boyd knew about the slayings because he was there at the Chipman Street house when the couple were being held captive and brutalized.
Boyd's defense attorney, Lomonaco demanded a mistrial, arguing that the prosecutors had unfairly prejudiced jurors by trying to implicate Boyd in the fatal carjacking even though he is not charged with it.
"Clearly this is evidence of uncharged crimes that is only intended to inflame the jury and to suggest to the jury Mr. Boyd was involved in this carjacking," he argued.
Stone countered that he and Jennings must prove Boyd knew about Davidson's crimes in order to prove he was an accessory to carjacking.
"What I hear is (Lomonaco) doesn't like what's coming in (as evidence)," Stone said. "The United States did not create the facts in this case. They are what they are. I have not heard Mr. Lomonaco argue these facts are not relevant."
U.S. District Judge Tom Varlan shot down Lomonaco's request.
Lomonaco next turned his attention to Sutton, who he contends is just as guilty as Boyd is alleged to be in hiding a killer. He insists, however, that she escaped prosecution because she, unlike Boyd, Davidson and three others implicated in the slayings, is white and the niece of Knoxville Police Department Officer Dennis R. Bible.
A single mother, Sutton, 22, testified Friday that she left Davidson the day before Christian and Newsom were kidnapped because he had abused her. She went to stay with a co-worker and her girlfriend.
She did not mourn the broken relationship long. On the same day she left Davidson, she went out with a man she only identified as "Black" to "eat and hang out." The following night, she had another date, this one ending in sex, she testified.
On Sunday, she talked to Davidson, who asked her to come back to their Chipman Street house so he could give her some clothing he had bought for her, she said. She agreed because she wanted to retrieve make-up and perfume she said she'd left behind.
Davidson met her at the door and followed her inside. Cobbins was sitting on a couch with "his head down." Another slaying suspect, George "G" Thomas, "was rolling a blunt," which is slang for a cigar-style marijuana cigarette, she said. The fourth slaying suspect, Cobbins' girlfriend, Vanessa Coleman, was nowhere in sight, she testified.
Sutton said she headed toward the bathroom.
"As soon as I reached the bathroom door, (Davidson) grabbed me and said, 'What are you doing?'" Sutton testified. "I said, 'Is Vanessa in there?' He said yes. It sounded like water was on, and something fell into the sink."
When Sutton tried to approach the bathroom from another door, Davidson again blocked her, she said.
"He started telling me it was his house," she said.
She left, but not before he gave her a bag of clothing and a ring. Turns out, the clothing and the ring belonged to Christian, who authorities believe was being held captive at that moment by Coleman in the bathroom.
Sutton testified that she suspected Davidson when she learned that Newsom's body had been discovered beside railroad tracks within sight of the Chipman Street house. But she allowed Davidson to stay at her friend's apartment and had sex with him. The next day, her mother phoned with news that Christian's body had been found inside a trash can in the Chipman Street house.
"She said, 'Oh, my God, Daphne, they found a body in your house.' She was worried it was me. She didn't know (Davidson) was laying beside me," Sutton testified. "His eyes were really big, like he knew what she was telling me."
Sutton said Davidson first blamed the killings on Cobbins, and also claimed that Cobbins had forced Christian to shoot Newsom. She said she and her friends convinced Davidson to leave by agreeing to drop him off at Ridgebrook Apartments off Western Avenue, where Boyd lived with his mother. Sutton admitted she never told police and repeatedly lied to them in an effort to impede their manhunt for Davidson. KPD Officer Ed Kingsbury testified Boyd was nabbed two days later and eventually admitted to helping Davidson hide by breaking into a vacant house on Reynolds Street. The trial continues Monday.
Bunch of animals. Death really is too good for them in this case. Funny how I never hear anything about this case except here on FR.
These scumbags committed homosexual acts of rape on Newsome before murdering him. Then kept Christian hostage and sexually violated her again and again before forcing bleach down her throat then strangling her.
I still cannot imagine what these two young people's last moments on earth were like.
The DA has played this perfectly -- he has two minor cut-outs testifying freely without the cover of immunity that he can return on perjury charges.
And then, of course, there's this:
"On April 5, 2003, Thomas A. Varlan was sworn in as United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Tennessee. Mr. Varlan was nominated by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the U.S. Senate by a vote of 97-0 on March 13, 2003. Mr. Varlan was recommended for his position by current U.S. Senator and Majority Leader Bill Frist and former U.S. Senator Fred Thompson."
All these people are scum.
I don’t get the headline though. Almost like it’s some kind of weird excuse or something.
If they were escaping drug dealers, why not just get the heck outta Dodge?
Why hang around and waste all that time torturing and killing?
take them out back and burn them.
I just watched coverage of this on the local TV station. It’s disgusting, showed one of the perps with an “I’m angry” sneer on his face.
TV also showed the father of the murdered girl, quoted him saying he taught his daughter to shoot a gun, and if one of the perps had given her the gun to shoot her boyfriend (like one of the accused is testifying), she would have taken one of the perps out. He said she likely would have still been killed, but would have taken out one of these animals on the way. The father was visably shaken and angry. I wish he could get his hands on these animals.
My heart goes out to the parents of the tortured and murdered young man and woman. They were deliberately tortured and murdered, and those who did this had help, and assistance in covering it up.
Killing is TOO MILD for these animals. They should be tortured and burned like they did their victims.
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