Wasted (30 page)
“No, sir,” said Thomas. “I didn’t want to touch it.”
Sawyer pulled out the bowie knife. “Before you saw it here in court, had you ever seen this knife before?”
“No, sir.”
“This knife belong to you?”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Did you know that this had been wrapped in cloth and put under Regina’s body?”
“No, sir.”
“Whenever you carried Regina’s body down to the Jeep, did you know what it was that had killed her, that is, did you know whether she had been stabbed, or shot, or electrocuted, or what her manner of death was?”
“No. I mean, at first, she was in the bathtub and she was wet. So at first, you know, common sense, maybe, you know, she drowned.”
“During this time, all the way up to the time that you actually got the body, had Kim ever said to you, ‘I killed her’?”
“No, sir, she didn’t.”
Thomas then told of burning the body, of running to the motel, of returning to his father’s house for the Fourth of July weekend, and that his aunt Bonnie Thomas had indeed told the truth about how he cut his hand. Then he got up, walked over to the jurors, spread his hands, and showed them his long-since-healed wound.
Moments later, Jim Sawyer passed the witness.
Gail Van Winkle looked at her notes, and then looked at Justin Heith Thomas. She always made lots of notes. “Write everything down,” her mother had taught her. Gail Van Winkle even woke during the night to write things down; she didn’t want to forget anything.
“You recall the testimony that there was quite a bit of blood in the apartment, Regina’s apartment, that was found by the DPS lab team. You recall that?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Thomas, “I do.”
“You recall your blood being identified on the shower-curtain rod.”
“Yes, ma’am, I do.”
“Okay. And various other parts of the house.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“It’s your testimony that you didn’t have a cut on your hand and that’s not your blood from your wound.”
“I believe,” said Thomas, “that was there from when I got in the accident on the scooter.”
“Okay,” said Van Winkle. “So it’s your testimony you got a scrape on your knee.”
“It was more than a scrape,” said Thomas.
“And the blood,” she said, “ended up on the shower-curtain rod in her bathroom. You dispute the testimony from the lab tech that that’s your blood.”
“Oh, no.”
“Okay. So your blood from a scooter accident appeared on the shower-curtain rod in the bathroom where the body was found.”
“That’s where I washed my cuts,” Thomas explained. “I took a shower and washed.”
“You’re saying after the scooter accident. How did you get blood on the palm of your hand? How did the blood get from your knee on a shower-curtain rod?”
“It was on my elbows,” he said.
“Did you touch the shower-curtain rod with your elbow?”
“I imagine I did. I had to hold myself up to wash my knees.”
“You’re a tall man. A shower-curtain rod’s generally over your head or at your face level. Is that not correct?”
“To keep balance,” he said.
“So, with your elbow you balanced yourself?”
“No, no. I had washrags, too. I imagine I put a washrag up there. I was washing out wounds.”
“So you would have wiped the shower-curtain rod with a bloody washcloth? Is that your testimony?”
“I could have,” answered Thomas. “I don’t know how it got there. I’m not saying I know how it got there.”
“You were gushing blood from your scooter accident?”
“It wasn’t gushing, but it was bleeding.”
“Was it bleeding to the point where it would fling onto the walls?”
“Bleeding to the point where it would drop if I wasn’t holding something over it.”
“Drop how? Just onto the ground?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Any idea how your blood was found on the walls in the hallway of Regina’s apartment?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Not from the scooter accident,” Van Winkle said.
“I don’t know how, ma’am.”
“Would you be, I mean, it’s not consistent with your injury is it?”
“Blood was dripping from my elbow and one of my knees.”
“Dripping from your elbow?”
“Dripping like straight down, like, you know, it was forming up and after it collected, it would drip.”
“So Kim’s description of your scooter accident would, you obviously disagree with.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And you’re saying it was pretty serious.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Did you get it treated by a doctor?”
“No, ma’am.”
“But it was enough, it was bleeding where it got on other parts of the furniture as well. Is that right?”
“I presume,” Thomas answered.
“Do you recall it bleeding onto the chair, the black leather chair?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“How did it get on the chair?”
“When I first came in, I sat down on the chair.”
“Okay. And what part of your body touched the chair?”
“My elbows, my knee.”
“So you had a bleeding elbow and knee and you wiped it on this nice, new, black leather—”
“No, I didn’t wipe it on.” Justin Thomas’s father had always insisted that the boy be neat.
“You’re saying it dripped.”
“I sat down,” he said.
“Did you see it drip off onto the leather chair?”
“No.” He forgot the “ma’am.”
“But that’s your testimony as to how the blood got there on [the chair in] Regina’s apartment.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Gail Van Winkle had had only one night to prepare her cross-examination of Justin Thomas. Only the day before Gregg Cox and she had decided that she would question Thomas.
“Any reason you’d be standing by the window?”
“I don’t recall.”
“You have no idea how your blood got by the window on the carpet.”
“That would be in front of the chair, not directly in front of the chair,” Thomas replied.
“And do you have any idea how your blood got on the ... there was a statue on the coffee table. Do you remember the coffee table, the blood that was there on the statue?”
“I was standing pretty much over the coffee table.”
“So you were dripping onto the coffee table.”
“Could have.”
“Did you ever clean [the blood] up?”
“No. Regina said not to worry about it. ‘Don’t worry about it, Jay.’”
“Now you testified that you lived with Regina a couple of days before Kim and Regina went to Cancun.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And she let you stay in her apartment with her before she left.”
“Couple of days prior to. Well, three of us stayed there.”
“The three of you stayed there. And why did you not stay at Kim’s apartment with Kim?”
“One or two nights we did.”
“So you weren’t living with Regina then, were you?”
“I had my stuff there, yeah, I was.”
“And you were living there.”
“I remember one night before they went to Cancun, we went and stayed at Kim’s because she wanted to have sex and we obviously couldn’t do that with Regina there.”
“Would have been kind of awkward to stay at Regina’s, wouldn’t it, with Kim, when you had an apartment that was empty? Where did you sleep?”
“When?”
“At Regina’s when Regina was there?”
“When she was there I slept on the couch.”
“And you chose to do that rather than stay at Kim’s.”
“Well, Kim had a roommate at the time. We didn’t . . . I don’t think he liked me too much.”
“Her roommate had his own room, didn’t he?”
“No. It was a one-[bed]room apartment. Kim had the bedroom. He lived in the living room.”
“But you had a place to go for privacy.”
“Yes.”
“But you chose to stay at Regina’s rather than stay at Kim’s.”
“It’s not like I stayed there every night,” said Thomas. “I went back and forth.”
“So you weren’t living at Regina’s.”
“Yes, I was. That’s where I resided.”
“And your testimony is Regina had no problem with you and Kim staying at her one-bedroom apartment when you had a place to stay. That was the setup.”
“Well, when we were there, we were usually up on drugs, and when they got tired is when either Kim would leave or I would leave with Kim.”
“So you wouldn’t spend the night.”
“Not all the time.”
“But you were living there.”
“Yes.”
“Now, when you cut your hand, you were at your, where you say you cut your hand, at your parents’ place.”
“Can I finish now?” asked Thomas.
“I’m asking you a question,” said Van Winkle. “Do you want to continue an answer?”
“You didn’t let me finish explaining how I got it.”
“About what? How you got what?”
“How I cut my hand.”
“Well, let me ask that question. I believe that was quite a few questions ago. You’re saying that you have more explanation.”
“You asked me to explain—you wanted to hear the whole thing and then you . . .”
“If you would like to continue to explain how you cut your hand, go ahead.”
“Okay, I came back from across the river, and you have to jump a fence to get back into our property, and when I did that is when I snagged my hand.”
“So you weren’t mending a fence on your father’s land.”
“Not at that time, no, ma’am.”
“And that’s not how you got this wound.”
Thomas looked at the prosecutor. “What do you mean?”
“You were not, at the time you got your wound, mending a fence.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Why did you tell Detective Carter that?”
“I couldn’t really recollect. I was, like I said, I was pretty shocked at the time, plus I was pretty strung out.”
“But you told Detective Carter that you did it mending a fence.”
“I don’t necessarily remember saying that, but I guess I could have.”
“You didn’t tell him the truth?”
“I don’t remember what I said to Detective Carter that night.”
“Now you heard testimony,” said Van Winkle, “that there was—your blood was found in Kim’s Jeep.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“That had nothing to do with the scooter accident, did it?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Kim didn’t come pick you up after you had your scooter accident, did she?”
“One of them did,” he said, “but I can’t . . . I don’t remember which one it was.”
Van Winkle looked at Thomas. She was an intimidating woman. “One of them did?” she asked.
“They came and—”
“I thought you rode the scooter back to Regina’s.”
“I rode to the store, where I called them.”
“And then how did you get the scooter back to Regina’s apartment?”
“They came.” Thomas was getting frustrated. “I started to make sure it was still working and they came.” His frustration was showing.
“Well, now you’re saying Regina and Kim came and picked you up?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“After you had the scooter accident.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Was it Regina who picked you up?” Van Winkle was relentless.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, the blood was found in Kim’s Jeep.”
“I believe they came in Kim’s Jeep.”
“You’re saying Regina picked you up in Kim’s Jeep.”
“No, they. They were both together at the time.”
“Now you’re saying Kim picked you up in Kim’s Jeep?”
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