Defense: Lackey a ‘geek’

By Karen Middleton
karen@athensnews-courier.com

February 27, 2008 09:36 pm

— The Limestone County Circuit Courtroom sat in rapt silence twice Wednesday in the opening day of testimony in the capital murder trial of Andrew Reid Lackey—once listening to the taped sounds of violent death and once viewing the video of resulting carnage.
Lackey, 24, of Huntsville, is accused of the Oct. 31, 2005, slaying of 80-year-old Charlie Newman in his North Hine Street home in Athens.
After opening statements Wednesday by District Attorney Kristi Valls and defense attorney Randall Gladden of Huntsville, Valls played an approximately two-minute 911 call originating from Newman’s home at 7:32 p.m. In it can be heard an apparently violent confrontation.
A voice identified as Newman’s screams “Ow!” and “Leave me alone!” and attempts to reason with his assailant, “You’ve got your whole life ahead of you,” and “Come sit down and let me pray for you.”
Interspersed with Newman’s pleas is a deeper voice repeatedly demanding, “Where’s the vault? Where’s the vault?”
Later in the day, juxtaposed against the loud chaos of the 911 recording, jurors watched a videotape shot of the crime scene by Athens Police investigator Trevor Harris. With no accompanying commentary and amid a hushed and darkened courtroom, the tape rolled, showing bloody footprints leading from Newman’s home.
A glass storm door with a bloody smear opens to more bloody footprints across the kitchen linoleum tile and into the den, where Newman lay sprawled on his back in blood-soaked blue pajamas.
During opening statements, Valls said Newman was shot, stabbed 70 times—including two slashes to his carotid artery – bludgeoned with a blunt instrument and had his left eye gouged from its socket.
Lackey appeared to sit impassively throughout the gruesome tight shots of Newman’s battered and slashed body.

Computer geek
In his opening statement, Gladden said he could not “argue with the basics of the case,” but rather paint a portrait of a young man he called a “geek” and who spent hours daily trading over the on-line auction Web site e-Bay.
Testimony from Derrick Newman, the victim’s grandson, painted an even more bizarre picture of Lackey, who he said would have as many as four computers up and running at one time and simultaneously engaging in up to seven games with opponents around the globe.
Gladden said these activities, along with the array of items found in a rental car Lackey allegedly drove to the murder scene—hammers, mallet, hatchet, duct tape, Super Glue, stun gun, batteries, starter pistol, night-vision goggles, ski mask, screw drivers— make Lackey seem bizarre.
“You would have to say there’s got to be something wrong with this person’s mind.
“You’re going to think this man is not sane.”
However, Lackey pleaded not guilty; he did not plead “not guilty by reason of insanity or mental defect,” Gladden said.
During opening statements, Gladden alluded to a mental evaluation he had performed on his client.
Valls said during a break that because Lackey did not plead insanity, the state did not order a mental evaluation.
After the close of Wednesday’s testimony, Gladden said outside the hearing of the jury that the private mental evaluation he had hired someone to perform on Lackey showed he was not legally insane.
Asked if he was suggesting that Lackey’s countless hours of life in cyberspace led to an altered state of reality, Gladden answered, “He just lives in a different world than you and I do.”
Gladden said there has never been an indication that Lackey used or was under the influence of drugs on Oct. 31, 2005. He said Lackey’s demeanor remains quiet, reserved and polite, as it has from the time he was charged with Newman’s killing a day after the crime.

First to arrive
Athens Patrol Officer Katrina Johnson Flanagan testified Wednesday that she was the first to arrive on the scene of what was reported as a 10-97— a domestic disturbance —and gingerly stepped around bloody footprints so as not to disturb evidence.
She testified about the condition of Newman’s body and of seeing a set of dentures under a chair and a wireless phone handset out of its cradle.
Soon, backup officers arrived and Lt. Floyd Johnson put out a BOLO—Be On the Lookout—to surrounding law-enforcement officers for someone who was probably suffering from a gunshot wound based on the trail of blood leading from the murder scene.
A short time later, Madison Police reported that they had received a 911 call from the Chevron station at Madison Boulevard and Wall-Triana Highway in which a man reported he had been shot.
Former Madison Police officers Wade Watson and Clayton Jordan testified that they found Lackey at the station waiting on a curb and sipping a soft drink he had purchased inside.
Watson said Lackey lifted his shirt and showed what appeared to be a bullet hole in his upper left chest.
“He said he had been shot,” Watson said. “I asked him where it happened and he said he didn’t know. He wouldn’t answer.
Officers called HEMSI ambulance service and paramedics soon arrived and began to administer first aid.
When the paramedics cut Lackey’s shirt off, Watson instructed that it be deposited in a red biohazard bag, which he put in Lackey’s vehicle, he said. While putting the bag in the vehicle, Watson said he noticed a knife with the tip of the blade missing. He said he also saw a gun on the floorboard.

Newman’s gun
Valls presented evidence that showed bullets removed from both Newman and Lackey came from the same gun, a .38 caliber Rossi. A friend of Newman’s, Doris Lankster, who said she had been the widower’s companion for about five years, testified she had sold the Rossi to Newman several years ago for $25 and another smaller handgun.
Lankster said Newman owned several guns, one of which he kept in his nightstand, one he carried in his pocket when he left the house, and the Rossi, which he hung from the antlers of a mounted deer head in his den.

Where’s the vault?
Valls contends that Lackey acted under the belief that Newman was a multimillionaire and kept large amounts of cash locked in a vault in his home.
Lackey and Newman’s grandson, Derrick Newman of Harvest, had been close friends since they met while in the fourth grade. Derrick, the son of Charlie Newman’s son, Ricky Newman, testified that he had only seen his grandfather once since the death of his grandmother some 10 or more years before the murder.
Valls said during a break that Charlie Newman was reported to have had a falling out with Ricky Newman after the death of the elder Newman’s wife because of the distribution of some of his wife’s possessions.
Derrick said he often talked about his grandfather in front of Lackey, saying that he was “mean” and had a secret vault in a doorway under the stairs in his home. He said he boasted of the vault because he thought it was “cool” for his grandfather to have a vault and because he remembered that as a child he saw his grandfather emerge from the room under the stairs with a bag that had a zipper and had a lot of money inside.
Under cross-examination, Gladden repeatedly asked Derrick if he had plotted with Lackey to rob his grandfather and asked him if he had told Lackey where his grandfather lived and even drove him past his house.
Derrick began to sob on the stand, saying he felt remorse for telling Lackey about his grandfather’s wealth and supposedly secret vault, but he denied helping plan the crime.
Testimony is scheduled to resume at 9 a.m. today in Judge Robert Baker’s courtroom.