Aug. 25 TEXAS: Coble murder retrial begins Testimony continued Monday afternoon in the capital murder retrial of convicted murderer Billie Wayne Coble, 59. The case is being heard in Judge Matt Johnsons courtroom in 54th State District Court. Coble spent more than 17 years on death row before a federal appeals court overturned his death sentence but left intact his conviction in the deaths of Robert and Zelda Vicha and their son, Waco police Sgt. Bobby Vicha in August 1989. Following this morning's testimony, 3 more women, including two former neighbors and Coble's niece testified that he displayed inappropriate sexual behavior toward them in the 1970s. His niece said besides inappropriately touching and kissing her, a family member caught Coble peeking into the niece's window after she took a shower and was getting dressed. The 3 women who testified Monday afternoon were all in their early teens at the time that Coble's inappropriate sexual interest was directed at them. Earlier today, Cobles former sister-in-law and his 1st wife testified against him regarding inappropriate sexual behavior. The sister of Cobles first wife testified this morning in his capital murder retrial that Coble acted inappropriately with her on at least four occasions. Patricia Woolley, whose sister Pam was married to Coble for 10 years, said the first instance was when she was 13. Her sister had not yet married Coble, but while they were in the back seat of a car returning from a trip, Coble rubbed her thigh, she said. Patricia Woolley said she slid away from Coble after his advance. The next time was when she was 15, she testified. She and Coble had pretended to wrestle, but then he fondled her breast. One year later, while swimming in Lake Waco, Coble touched her inappropriately, she said. Patricia Woolley then recounted a time when she was 17 or 18 and taking a shower at home. She said Coble slid open the shower door, made lewd comments about her body and then held the sliding door open and wouldnt let her close it. She also told the court she was struck by Coble once when he came to pick up his son, Gordon. Coble wasn't allowed inside the house and Patricia Woolley said she blocked his path at the gate. Coble, she said, grew agitated and hit her in the mouth, busting her lip. During earlier testimony her sister, Pam Woolley, told jurors that she still considers Coble to be "dangerous." Pam Woolley, who was married to Coble from 1971 to 1981, was the 1st witness called by the prosecution. Pam Woolley said the beginning of their marriage was fine. Coble had a job at Texas Ironworks and they later co-managed the Circle Drive-in for 2 years. But she also described him as very possessive; he constantly called to check on her whereabouts. She said he abused her, recalling one time that Coble threw a baseball and hit her in the back while she had an arm around her son. The impact made her lungs swell and she sought medical treatment at the hospital, she testified. "We were just scared of him all the time," Pam Woolley said. She said Coble would apologize after the abuse but would it say it was her fault the abuse occurred. In opening comments, McLennan County District Attorney John Segrest said Coble seems to be a good guy until things go wrong for him. Then he transforms into an abusive, violent individual, Segrest said, adding that the prosecution will present evidence from Coble's 3 failed marriages to show that. Segrest said testimony will be offered that Coble sexually abused 4 young girls during his 1st marriage, including his 13-year-old sister-in-law and 16-year-old cousin. That marriage lasted 10 years, the prosecutor said. Coble then married an 18-year-old when he was 35. During that 4-year marriage, Coble sexually assaulted his niece, Segrest said. Coble's 3rd marriage, to Karen Vicha, was in July 1998. Coble married into a close-knit family and Karen already had 3 daughters, ages 15, 13 and 9, who thought the marriage was too good to be true, Segrest said. But that relationship soon soured, Segrest told jurors, and Karen Vicha filed for divorce. Coble was arrested kidnapping his wife in August 1989 and her brother, Bobby Vicha, was one of the arresting officers. "The thing that (Coble) wanted was Karen Vicha and the thing that stood between him and her was Bobby Vicha and the Vicha family," Segrest said. Coble then hatched a plot to kill the family to get Karen back, Segrest said. Coble's defense attorney, Alex Calhoun, asked the jury to consider the full measure of the man. Calhoun noted that the prosecution was talking about actions many years in Coble's past, and he plans to show jurors the man Coble has been the past 18 years and who he is becoming. (soource: Waco Tribune) **************** Convicted Killer's 1st Wife Describes Abuse The ex-wife of convicted triple killer Billy Wayne Coble testified Monday about the abuse she suffered during the marriage as testimony got underway in Coble's sentencing retrial. Coble, 59, was convicted in 1990 in the shooting deaths of his ex-wife's parents Robert and Zelda Vicha and her brother Bobby Vicha, who was a Waco Police sergeant. Pam Woolley was Coble's 1st wife, and she was the 1st witness to testify Monday in a trial that will determine whether Coble returns to death row. In sometimes emotional testimony, she told jurors about the abuse she suffered both during and after her marriage to Coble. When asked if she is still scared of Coble, she said, "Yes he still scares mehe's still a danger." She and Coble were married for 10 years and divorced a decade before the triple killing. Coble was waiting at the home of his estranged 3rd wife, Karen Vicha, when her daughters returned from school on Aug. 29, 1989. He handcuffed and tied up her 3 children and 1 of their cousins, cut the phone lines and then went down the street to the home of his brother-in-law, Waco police officer Bobby Vicha, whom Coble shot in the neck after a struggle. Next, Coble went to the home of his estranged wife's parents and shot both of them to death. Then, when Karen Vicha arrived home he handcuffed her, put her in her car, and drove off, assaulting her during the drive. He was arrested that night after a major manhunt and a brief high-speed chase that ended when the car Coble was driving crashed into a parked vehicle. The Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Coble's death sentence in August 2007. (source: KWTX News) ********************* Prosecutors seeking death penalty in Hurst Putt-Putt employee slaying 3 store surveillance cameras captured the robbers at Putt-Putt Golf & Games on Oct. 16, 2006, where assistant manager Jonas Paul Cherry begged for his life before he was fatally shot in midsentence. The bandits took 2 of the tapes in the cameras. But they missed one, and that ultimately led police to former Putt-Putt employee Paul David Storey of Fort Worth. According to arrest warrant affidavits, the holdup netted Storey about $150. On Wednesday, Storey, 23, goes on trial for his life in Criminal District Court No. 3. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. Accused of being an accomplice is Mark Porter, 22, of Fort Worth, also charged with capital murder in the case. His trial is scheduled for next month. The background According to police and arrest warrant affidavits, Cherry was a Paschal High School graduate who had worked at Putt-Putt for 12 years. Cherry, of Keller, had been married just 11 months before he was killed. He was also scheduled to open a bar with a friend in Fort Worth the week he was fatally shot. What happened Cherry, 28, arrived to work at Putt-Putt the morning of Oct. 16, 2006, and answered a buzzer at a back door. 2 robbers rushed in, grabbed Cherry and forced him to an area known as the clubhouse. 2 surveillance tapes were retrieved from an office as the robbers forced Cherry to open a safe and fill a bag with cash. As he was kneeling and pleading for his life, Cherry was shot in the back of the head. He was then shot several more times. The robbers then fled. After the holdup Video surveillance showed a maroon two-door Ford Explorer leaving Putt-Putt, and images were released to the media. A tipster told investigators that the vehicle belonged to Storey. Storey first told police that he and a passenger had truck trouble and stopped to get help but fled when they heard gunshots, the affidavit states. But he later changed his story, telling investigators they had gone to the business to rob it, according to the affidavit. *** Death penalty sought in Hurst business slaying A former Putt-Putt Golf & Games worker goes on trial Wednesday in the 2006 slaying of the company's assistant manager. Paul David Storey, 23, is charged with capital murder in the shooting death of a Jonas Paul Cherry. Mr. Cherry, who managed the Hurst amusement center, was killed on Oct. 16, 2006 during a robbery. Mr. Cherry, 28, was still holding his keys when he was found. The safe was open and several spent casings from a 9mm firearm were found nearby. Mr. Story was arrested after he was found on videotapes from the business. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Mr. Storey. Testimony begins Wednesday in Criminal District Court No. 3. (source for both: Dallas Morning News) ****************** Mount Vernon's support carries man through darkest days In a world of 18th-century antiques, gilded gold frames and polished crystal, perhaps the most utilitarian object at The Veranda Bed & Breakfast was an unadorned black plastic box sitting atop a dresser in Warren Butler's master bedroom. Robert Whiteside's ashes rested inside. Waiting. Waiting, really, for Warren to be able to say it's over. Only then, he had resolved, could they be scattered across the 68 acres of East Texas pine needles that had been Robert's quiet kingdom. Warren had fought through months of depression. He had resisted the urge to run away and had stayed in Mount Vernon, a 55-year-old gay man alone in the rural Texas Bible Belt. But the case against Robert's attackers just seemed to drag one month into the next with little sign of progress, an inescapable voice in the back of Warren's mind. Mark Aaron Rains, a 22-year-old local drug user, had confessed 3 times, escaped once and sat under maximum security at the Franklin County jail, trying to figure out how to bust loose again. He was the one who pulled the trigger that October night, leading a group of 3 in a botched robbery targeting Robert's jewelry workshop. It was up to Franklin County District Attorney Martin Braddy to decide whether to try to put him to death. "This is the most difficult decision since I've been here," the district attorney said from his office inside an old green 2-story home in Sulphur Springs. "I've had more than 1 person come to me and say, 'Why don't you just give this guy life without parole. Surely the victims will be OK with that,' sort of suggesting you can't be gay and be for the death penalty." The district attorney, who grew up in a small town nearby and presided over some of the smallest counties in Texas, said issues like sexuality and race had no place in his office. "I can't speak about what it was in the past, but it's not that now," he said. Robert, in fact, was the first murder victim Mr. Braddy had known personally. For a wedding anniversary, he had taken his wife to The Veranda for dinner, deeply impressed by both the place and the fact they were sitting next to chicken mogul Bo Pilgrim and his wife. And in the months that followed Robert's death, he had watched Mount Vernon embrace Warren. "What appears to have happened with Warren is that this tragedy ... has now made him one of theirs." At home As Warren peeled back the veneer from Mount Vernon, it was quickly losing its appearance of homogeny. He had spent six years isolated from the town after leaving Dallas to live with Robert, but now his inroads grew deeper and more varied. Once a week, there was the domino club, a gossipy gathering of multigenerational Mount Vernonites and relative newcomers. On another weekend, there was the culture club, comprising likeminded straight and gay couples from across East Texas. Plus, Warren had taken over Robert's place as a director of Mount Vernon Music, organizing occasional concerts. In town, where Warren spent an increasing amount of time, strangers still approached at the grocery store, post office and bank, just checking in or offering kind words of support. After a particularly robust local harvest, a neighbor showed up at his door with 4 plastic bags full of corn, shucked and cleaned. Slowly, this was becoming home. Then in October, at a birthday party for one of the domino club members, Warren met Mark Ramsay, part of a storied, deep-rooted Mount Vernon family. Mark's dad, Tom Ramsay, was a longtime Texas state representative who ran a prominent real estate business and had part of Highway 37 named after him. Mark was 33 and gay. He had left Mount Vernon for college in Waco where he had first come out about his sexuality. He later lived in New York and Dallas, but returned home after hard times and an emotionally abusive relationship. He and Warren hit it off. They listened to the same kind of music and watched the same classic movies and sitcoms. "I'm out here in a gay wasteland, and here's a guy who was smart who had seen the world. And also, you know, I was hurting and he was hurting and we were able to be there for each other," Mark said. Over the following months, they became the best of friends. Mark accompanied Warren to pretrial hearings, and Warren helped at Mark's accounting business during tax season. But on most nights, they would just sit in the living room or out on the wrap-around porch and talk over gin and cigarettes. In the winter, Tom Ramsay asked his son and Warren to serve on the chamber of commerce board, hoping to revitalize the group with some fresh blood. Both agreed. Still, Mark and Warren knew they walked a fine line in town. It was the line between being out but not too far out. Neither, for instance, would consider holding hands with another man downtown or engaging in public displays of affection. But having Warren in the community, especially after the murder, could only help make people more tolerant, Mark believed. "I think it makes people aware that the loss of a partner in a gay relationship is the same as the loss of a partner in a straight relationship," he said. Financial reality After months of living in a fog, Warren grew stronger week by week. He mastered the tractor, although it got stuck in the mud a few times. When he needed help with machinery or advice on clearing trees, he'd often call his younger brother, Bill Butler. Bill, who worked for a liquor distributor and was an outdoorsman, had never considered Warren comfortable with manual labor. As a child, he'd always seen him in his element inside: making clothes, cooking, painting. He even made Barbie clothes for his sister Ramona's dolls. "That's a side of my brother I've never seen. Warren with a wrench in his hands would be like me sitting at a sewing machine," he said. "To see him take off and go like he's gone, it's just unbelievable." But despite Warren's best efforts, The Veranda wasn't making much money. As the financial crunch deepened, Bill and his older brother, Jim, came from Waco for a heart-to-heart. "Warren, are you keeping this because of Rob's memory or are you staying here because you want to stay here?" Jim asked. The truth is that it was both. It was Robert's legacy and Warren's therapy. After months of deep darkness, he was beginning to feel at home. And just like in town, he was growing closer with his family. One night, after talking about the finances of The Veranda, he and Jim and Bill sat around and talked and drank gin martinis and Johnnie Walker. The conversation turned to lifestyle. Warren explained to Bill that being gay isn't just a physical thing. It's about companionship. Love. "That's when I started to look at the deal a whole lot different," Bill said. "It makes me be more accepting of people for what they are and the way that they are. I mean, it just made me stop and think all the years I was prejudiced. All the slang terms I used over the years loosely. Just like Warren said, it's not just a physical thing. It's the companionship. You look at how many people who go through life and never find true love." Jim later said: "I don't feel real comfortable talking about it, but unfortunately for our family it took this for us to acknowledge Warren's lifestyle ... for us as a family to all sit down and talk about it." < The criminal case Warren approached a banker he knew and took out a loan. He could not quit yet. He had to prepare for a trial. "It's like waiting for the other shoe to drop," he said in the winter. "At some point, I'm going to have to go through all this again." Mr. Braddy, however, remained on the fence about the death penalty. For the district attorney, a young and religious family man, it came down to this: Was Mr. Rains evil or just badly broken? In April, the district attorney got his answer. Mr. Rains was recorded talking with his mother during a jail visitation. "I'm not worried. You know I'm lucky as hell when it comes to [stuff] like this. ..." "I'm just on a vacation." Mr. Braddy decided that Mr. Rains would never live again as a free man. He would offer him life without the possibility of parole. If he refused, he would seek the death penalty. On most days, Warren tried to keep his mind off the trial, but he often couldn't. He struggled through the uncertainty while preparing emotionally for a trial he knew would force him to relive the trauma. He joked with friends that his backbone was slowly morphing into a steel rod. In June, at a pretrial hearing on the admissibility of Mr. Rains' confessions, he watched a video of the killer recounting the murder without emotion or remorse, coolly smoking a cigarette. Warren's blood pressure spiked. He suffered headaches pounding behind his eyes. His doctor put him on blood pressure medication. Sleeping pills at night helped take the edge off. Mr. Braddy set a final deadline for Mr. Rains to take a deal: June 30. The week before, Warren had left on vacation. He was in a Canadian grocery store when he got the call. With 2 hours on the clock, Mr. Rains decided to plead guilty. He agreed to testify against the other 2 suspects. "I'm just still in that stunned phase," Warren said from Canada. "It's kind of a surreal feeling when you're prepared for it to go one way and today it's over. It's almost like Christmas." He stopped to cry. "I haven't had time to emotionally process all this news yet." Formal statement After returning from Canada to Mount Vernon in the days leading up to a final court date, Warren insisted that he did not want to address Mr. Rains. He didn't want to acknowledge his existence. But on the morning of July 8, the day of Mr. Rains' sentencing, Warren was strangely more relaxed than the previous days. He woke at dawn to add a few lines to a formal statement. He said he was thinking about reading it in court after all. Asked why, he shrugged his shoulders and said it was his prerogative to change his mind. That was all. At 8 a.m., he entered a small unremarkable courtroom attached to the jail. Mark was there, among other friends. Minutes before the hearing began, Warren told Mr. Braddy he wanted to address Mr. Rains. The end was near. "You OK?" Mr. Braddy asked Warren before they approached the judge. Warren shook. "Actually, I think I want you to do it." Mr. Braddy stood next to Warren and read his statement into the record. "This confessed killer sits here now in front of us facing a sentence of life in prison without parole," he read. "I sit here with three life sentences: the rest of my life without my partner, Robert King Whiteside; the memory of my discovering Robert's body lying dead face down in a pool of blood which I will live with the rest of my life; and a life forever changed emotionally, financially and with a lost sense of security due to a cruelty and total disregard for human life." With that, it was over. 2 paths What went unsaid, however, was how profoundly the last 21 months had transformed Warren. Robert's death had also been his coming out: out of Robert's shadow, to his family and in town. When he looked at his future, it was his again. He could decide the future of The Veranda, sell Robert's remaining jewelry and even think about dating again. "I thought, if I did sell the property, would I stay in the area or not? That's become more of a valid question in the last couple of months because I'm becoming more and more ingrained now in the community and with the people that I know out here. I mean, this has become my home," he said. "It's really sad that it took what happened with Robert for that to happen. " Robert, however, had always loved his parcel of East Texas. Warren knew it was where he would rest forever. Out in the woods, there are two trails that weave between the pine trees, pond and meadow. Every morning, Robert would wake up and travel one with his dog Rachael and a walking stick, surveying his territory and meditating on the day ahead. He would start these days like a gleeful child in a new world, slowly maturing into an adult over the next 12 hours. Then the next morning it would start again, always in the woods with his morning communion, that daily act of rebirth. Soon, the box on the dresser will be empty. Robert is going home. Warren is ready to let go. (source: Dallas Morning News)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS
Rick Halperin Mon, 25 Aug 2008 18:10:46 -0500 (Central Daylight Time)
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS Rick Halperin