Prosecution peppers witnesses with questions at Randy Taylor trial
May 7, 2014 by admin
Filed under Latest Lingerie News
Tuesday, 5:30 p.m.:
Nelson County Commonwealth’s Attorney Anthony Martin questioned numerous witnesses Tuesday, including the man Randy Taylor claimed was with him and Alexis Murphy the night she vanished.
Special Agent John Pittman of the FBI said in court that Taylor had stated that he, Murphy, and a third man had gone to Taylor’s property off U.S. 29 to perform a drug deal.
Pittman said Taylor later identified that man as Dameon Bradley.
Bradley took the stand Tuesday to say such an exchange never took place.
“Alexis and I have never been in the same room together,” Bradley said.
When Murphy disappeared, Bradley was dating her cousin, he said.
Bradley said he was at a hotel in Madison Heights the night Murphy disappeared. Murphy and Bradley had communicated through Facebook, but never in person.
Shortly thereafter, Bradley went to Atlanta to visit his father and Birmingham to search for work.
Upon being contacted by the FBI, Bradley said he willingly took a DNA test.
Pittman testified in court Tuesday that search teams did not find any traces of DNA of an African-American man in Taylor’s camper.
When asked if he knew Taylor, Bradley said his former girlfriend had bought a car from an automobile dealership in Ruckersville where Taylor had worked.
Taylor’s attorney, Michael Hallahan, had subpoenaed Bradley as a witness, but excused him following his Tuesday testimony.
“I think everyone was waiting for poor Dameon Bradley,” said Trina Murphy, great-aunt to Alexis, following the Tuesday hearing. “Clearly, he wasn’t there and he wasn’t involved.”
Martin ended Tuesday saying he may call on one to two more witnesses Wednesday, before the prosecution rests.
Tuesday, 2:52 p.m.: “I didn’t hurt the girl,” Randy Taylor tells investigators in a recorded interview played during the fourth day of his murder trial.
Taylor, 48, faces murder and other charges in connection with the disappearance of 17-year-old Murphy, of Nelson County.
Tuesday afternoon, Nelson County Commonwealth’s Attorney Anthony Martin called on John Pittman, a special agent with the FBI, to testify.
Initially, Taylor denied knowing Murphy, Pittman said. But investigators told Taylor that DNA tests proved the hair extension, piercing, and nail found in his camper matched Murphy’s DNA.
Following this revelation, Taylor asked to see his son, Pittman said in court.
In a recorded interview played in court, Taylor tells investigators he struck up a conversation with Murphy at the Liberty gas station, asking her where he might buy some marijuana.
Murphy told him she knew someone and that he should drive to a nearby car wash, Taylor says in the recorded interview.
At the car wash, the drug dealer seemed hesitant, Taylor says, so he invited him and Murphy back to his property.
“We came back here. We smoked a little weed,” Taylor says in the interview.
After the drug exchange, Murphy and the dealer left, Taylor says.
“Nothing bad happened here,” Taylor tells investigators.
In the recording, investigators seem reluctant to believe Taylor’s account of the drug deal.
“I think something more happened here,” says Investigator Billy Mays, of the Nelson County Sheriff’s Office.
Tuesday, 12:16 p.m.: Nelson County’s prosecutor introduced numerous pieces of evidence in court Tuesday morning, including Alexis Murphy’s cell phone and a scrapbook of photos of women dressed in lingerie found on the property where Randy Taylor lived, as Taylor’s murder trial continued for a fourth day.
Dustin Simerly, an electronics engineer with the FBI, testified Murphy’s phone had “a huge amount of extensive damage.”
“The back was completely smashed off,” he said.
The battery had been pulled from the phone, and the microprocessor of the white iPhone 4 lay cracked, so investigators could not retrieve any information from the phone.
Taylor, 48, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, murder in commission of abduction and abduction with intent to defile in connection with the disappearance of Alexis Murphy, 17, of Shipman in Nelson County. She was last seen Aug. 3. Taylor’s trial, now in its fourth day, is expected to last two weeks in all.
On Aug. 14, canine teams discovered the phone about 70 feet from where Taylor’s camper sat, said Jon Cromer, of the Virginia State Police.
Cromer said the phone sat within an area of “dense growth,” though it was spotted by a search crew member.
“It was clearly visible,” Cromer said.
Cromer went on to testify that crews discovered a red scrapbook in the abandoned home near Taylor’s camper. The scrapbook photos featured what Cromer described as “glamor shots” with some women dressed in lingerie.
Several photographs had the head of a blonde girl imposed on a different body. Cromer said he identified this girl as the daughter of the owner of an automobile dealership where Taylor had worked in Ruckersville.
Michael Hallahan, Taylor’s attorney, pointed out in court that Taylor neither lived in the home, nor did it belong to him. When Hallahan asked if any forensic testing had been done to link Taylor to the scrapbook, Cromer said he was not aware of any such testing.
Tuesday, 11:09 a.m.: Jurors on Tuesday heard another audio recording between law enforcement and the man accused of murder in the disappearance of Nelson County 17-year-old Alexis Murphy.
Randy Taylor, 48, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, murder in commission of abduction and abduction with intent to defile. His trial, now in its fourth day, is expected to last two weeks in all.
Nelson County Commonwealth’s Attorney Anthony Martin called Nelson County Sheriff’s Deputy Billy Mays, the sheriff’s office’s lead investigator in the case, to testify Tuesday morning.
Martin played a recorded interview between Mays and Taylor from Aug. 7, four days after Murphy vanished. In the interview, Mays asks Taylor about his whereabouts on the days surrounding Murphy’s disappearance.
Taylor often responds that he cannot remember.
“There are a lot of gaps here,” Mays tells Taylor at one point.
Taylor told investigators he could not recall stopping at the Liberty gas station on U.S. 29.
A gas-station cashier has testified she saw Murphy and Taylor talking there Aug. 3. Surveillance video captured Taylor holding the door open for Murphy as she entered the store, and Murphy’s car — her dad’s white 2003 Nissan Maxima — leaving the gas station, following Taylor’s camoflauged truck. Murphy’s car was later found in an Albemarle County parking lot.
“You’re telling me where I was, but I don’t remember being there,” Taylor says in the recording.
In the recording, Taylor admits going to Charlottesville Aug. 4, going to Applebee’s and getting a cab ride home, but he denies driving a white car.
At one point in the recording, Taylor sounds agitated, saying, “You can arrest me,” but he repeatedly maintains he does not know what happened to Murphy.
Also Tuesday, Martin questioned John Webb, a firearms and toolmark examiner with the FBI.
Webb testified that in October, he tested a human nail matched to Murphy that was found in Taylor’s camper, off U.S. 29 in Lovingston. He said he determined Murphy’s nail showed no imprints or damage from tools such as clippers.
Martin showed a picture of the nail, its edge jagged and torn, to the jury.
