Lobster Boy

by Fred Rosen

  “Did there come a time when he got more specific?”

  “He came over and started talking about a bar, the Showtown bar. He wanted to do it up there. His wife would bring him out. He’d act like he was fishing at the bridge. Chris’d run up and shoot the man and I’d drive him away. I’d act as the getaway driver.”

  “What did you think of all of that?”

  “Just a bunch of talk was what I thought. I was really shocked when it happened. When Chris discussed the stuff, it was a big joke.”

  Then Chris asked him to get involved.

  “I said, ‘Sure, why not?’ I figured it was bullshit. More or less a topic of discussion.”

  “Did Christopher Wyant give any idea of the family’s involvement in the murder plot?”

  “Chris indicated it was a plan discussed with family members three weeks before.”

  “What happened to the plan to kill Mr. Stiles at Showtown?”

  “The next thing we heard was that Grady only went there in the daytime. Chris said, ‘Everything’s off now, he only goes up there during the day, never at night.’ He didn’t have another plan.”

  “How was he supposed to be paid for the job?”

  “He mentioned something about getting paid from a life-insurance policy.”

  “Did there come a time where there were further discussions about murdering Grady Stiles?”

  “There was another discussion. Chris told me about some plans but said he was talking to the family members about it.”

  “When did Christopher Wyant talk to you next about these plans?”

  “A week before the murder,” Waller answered. “The newest plan was to get Little Grady out of the house and all the family members out. Chris goes in and makes it look like a robbery.”

  “Did you see him the day of the murder?”

  “The day of the murder, he came over between four and six. The second time he came over with Glenn. He [Chris] was going to tell his mother he was spending the night at the Stileses’. He’d go in, shoot Mr. Stiles, come back to my place, and I’m supposed to give him an alibi.”

  “How were Mr. Wyant and Mr. Newman acting?”

  “They were laughing. Talking about doing it that night. Chris said he’d do it and Glenn agreed. I agreed to give him an alibi.”

  Waller agreed because he didn’t think Chris was serious.

  “No one believed they’d do it the way things were.”

  “Did you have some sort of physical problem that night?”

  “I had fluid on the knee and went to the hospital emergency room. I came back after that.”

  Waller had taken some medication for the pain in his knee. It made him groggy and he fell asleep. Then, late in the evening, “There was a knock on the living-room window of my trailer. Me and Ann were sleeping. It woke us up. I went out to see who it was.”

  “Who was it?”

  “It was Chris. Chris was there.”

  “What did he say?”

  “‘I dunnit. I shot the man.’”

  “What was he wearing?”

  “A black jacket and a Raiders cap.”

  “How was he acting?”

  “He was breathing heavy. ‘I shot the man,’ he said.”

  “What was your response?”

  “I didn’t say anything. I was drugged. I was shocked at what went down.”

  But he did let Wyant in.

  “What time was it then?”

  Waller wasn’t positive, because the kids had unplugged his VCR, but he figured it was between midnight and 1 A.M.

  “After Chris came back from the bedroom, he put the gun in a plastic bag in his jacket. I told him to put the gun away and Chris hid it. He went into the back bedroom.”

  After that, Waller, Butterworth, and Wyant went to sleep. The next morning, Wyant took a shower, and borrowed a pair of Waller’s pants. Chris then called his mother.

  “Chris’s mom came over to take him home. He went with his mother.”

  “Did you have occasion to see Christopher Wyant later in the day?”

  Waller was doing some chores out back later in the day when, “I saw Chris and Dennis Cowell coming from Chris’s trailer with garbage bags. They went into my trailer. Chris left the pants in the trailer. This was about noon. After they left, Ann came over and talked to me.”

  “Why didn’t you call the police and tell them what had happened?”

  “I didn’t want to get involved,” Waller answered in a frustrated tone. “I was trying to protect my family. I later told the cops what was going on. The first time I gave Chris his alibi, but the second time I told the truth.”

  At the lectern, Hanes studied his yellow legal notepad. With a ballpoint pen, he checked off questions, then looked up.

  “Did Chris say anything about what he did after shooting Mr. Stiles?”

  “He said after he shot Grady, he searched for his wallet and couldn’t find it. Someone [in the trailer] called him a name. He went up to Grady and fired point-blank.”

  Now there was a new wrinkle. Wyant claimed someone was in the trailer with him at the time of the murder.

  “When you saw Glenn and Chris earlier in the day, how did they act?”

  “Glenn and Chris appeared to be stoned and said they were during the second conversation. Chris, he always seemed hyper.”

  Hanes made one last check mark.

  “No further questions.”

  As Hanes sat, Donerly stood and ambled over to the lectern. In the early part of his questioning of Waller, Donerly tried to discredit his testimony by implying that he was a liar who changed his story every time the cops questioned him.

  “Chris used to date Ann at some point in the past?” Donerly asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Waller responded.

  “Did Chris and Glenn do any drugs when they were at your place?”

  “They took a few hits [of marijuana],” said Waller.

  “How was Chris acting?”

  “Chris was really wired, live and active.”

  “No further questions.”

  Waller stepped down. Donerly sat. Spoto stood.

  “Call Ann Butterworth.”

  Ann Butterworth wore a pink blouse underneath a cream-colored white suit that billowed out from her stomach that showed her to be very much pregnant. Waller held open the low wooden divider, separating the public section from the trial area, for his wife, who handed him her purse for safekeeping. Without missing a step, she strode to the stand.

  Ann Butterworth’s face was wan and washed-out. Lifeless black hair fell over pale white skin.

  “Ms. Butterworth,” began Sandra Spoto, who was doing the direct examination, “could you describe your trailer for us?”

  “There are two bedrooms, and one bath,” she said.

  “Back in November of 1992, were you pregnant?”

  “I was three-and-a-half to four months pregnant.”

  “And how long were you going out with Richard Waller?”

  “I been with Dick since October of 1992.”

  “And Chris?”

  “I knew Chris since late June, early July.”

  “And he visited your trailer?”

  “On a regular basis.”

  “Did there come a time when he spoke about murdering someone?”

  “I heard Chris talk about the killing, the plan, three to four times.”

  “When?”

  “I heard him talk about it the first time three weeks before Grady was killed in the trailer. He said he knew someone who wanted someone killed. I thought it was BS, to make conversation.

  “Three to four days later, we had the second conversation in the trailer. The gist of the conversation was formulating different plans. He mentioned one way was at the bar, at Showtown. Chris planned on laying the blame on a black person for killing Grady at Showtown.”

  “Did you talk any further about the murder plans?”

  “The third conversation. That one included Richard’s assisting, ne
ar the railroad tracks off Symmes Road. Richard’s part was to sit there with the car [and be the getaway driver].”

  “What did Richard think of all that?”

  “Richard’s reaction was he didn’t think nothing would happen.”

  “Was Chris going to be paid for this murder?”

  “Chris said he was going to ask for fifteen hundred to twenty-five hundred before he did it. I got no idea how much after.”

  “Did Christopher Wyant and Glenn Newman come over to your house together the day of the murder?”

  “The first conversation was early in the afternoon. Richard was at work on the fish bar. The second conversation was between 6:30 and 7 P.M. He came by with Glenn Newman. I didn’t know who he was at the time. He was this short and chubby guy. They called him Glenn. The gist of the conversation was small talk. Then Glenn left. I had come to figure for myself he was the boy who wanted it done. Chris then identified Glenn as ‘the client.’”

  “How did you react to that?”

  “I was in shock. Who’d want to have something done like that?”

  “How would you describe Chris?”

  “Cool and calm. He knows what he’s doing. He’s got a head on his shoulders. When he gets excited, he’s hyperactive. In between when he was calm and hyperactive was when he was with Glenn.”

  “So you saw Chris a second time that day, when?”

  “Between six to eight. I put the kids to bed. Two of three live with me, and Chris wanted to see Dick privately. They were setting up the alibi. Chris had his beeper with him. The idea was he would meet this girl at our trailer, but tell his mom he was sleeping over at Grady’s.”

  “Did you know what Chris was planning?”

  “I didn’t realize they were trying to make an alibi. Chris said, ‘They just want the pain to stop.’”

  “What time did you next see Chris?”

  “He came to the trailer late.”

  She then described the same story as Waller, how they were awakened and they opened the door to find Chris standing there. According to Butterworth the following conversation ensued between her, Richard, and Chris:

  “It’s done,” said Chris, really high-strung.

  “What are you talking about?” Ann asked.

  “He’s dead. I killed him.”

  “You did what?”

  “I killed him,” Chris repeated.

  “Richard couldn’t believe it actually happened,” Butterworth continued. “Richard said, ‘Chris, go to bed and don’t get up till morning.’”

  “Did Christopher Wyant describe what he had done?”

  “He said he shot him once. His head slumped over and he bent down. They started calling him a ‘pussy.’ So Chris shot him one more time from behind the ear.”

  Again, Butterworth had thrown the prosecution a curve. She had mentioned nothing before about someone else being in the room while he shot Grady.

  “He said the man he shot had on underwear. He was supposed to have his pants on, a wristwatch, and be in his wheelchair.”

  Chris spent the rest of the night with Waller and Butterworth. When he came back with Dennis Cowell the next day he asked:

  “Could I get it?”

  “Get what?” Butterworth asked back.

  “The gun.”

  “Where is it?”

  “It’s in the furnace.”

  The trailer had a gas-powered furnace in the rear of the trailer.

  “I showed them to where the furnace was,” Butterworth continued. “Chris opened it and took the gun out—it was in a plastic bag—and handed it to Dennis. Dennis hid it in his waistband, under a sweater.

  “That night the cops searched the trailer and found Chris’s black leather jacket.”

  On cross, Donerly had few questions. What was the point? Butterworth had already done his job for him. She had suddenly introduced the possibility that someone else was in the trailer at the time Grady was killed, egging Chris on. And both Butterworth and Waller mentioned the complicity of Dennis Cowell.

  In return for his assistance in solving the case, Cowell had already cut a deal that gave him probation. Still, why wasn’t Cowell testifying?

  “They know Cowell’s a powder keg,” Donerly told me when court had recessed for the day. “He’d be a three-hour cross and give me an opportunity to establish a different theory of what happened. That’s why they’re not putting him on.”

  Fifteen

  Day two of the trial began with testimony from Sally Allen, the person who sold Dennis Cowell the murder weapon. Spoto established that Cowell bought the murder weapon instead of Wyant because Cowell, eighteen, was old enough in the State of Florida to buy a firearm, while Chris was underage at the time.

  Detective James Iverson testified that he was the one who went to the Butterworth/Waller trailer and recovered Chris Wyant’s jacket.

  Dr. Robert Pfalzgraf testified next.

  Under Hanes’s patient questioning, Pfalzgraf established his credentials as a forensic pathologist, and then testified to his involvement in the case.

  “I was called to the scene on November 29th. I examined the body, which was sitting in a chair in the living room with his head slumped over and gunshot wounds to the back of the head. I had the crime-scene technicians take photographs at the scene. I had Grady Stiles’s body removed to my office, where I did the autopsy.”

  “What did you find?” Hanes asked.

  “There were three gunshot wounds to the head. I X-rayed the body. There were two bullets in the head. The autopsy was carried out to recover the bullets. One bullet went through the brain stem and struck the base of the skull. Either shot was fatal. [The third bullet] went in and chipped off the skull and exited.”

  After Hanes was through with Pfalzgraf, Donerly declined to cross-examine.

  Detective Mike Willette was next on the stand.

  “What did you do when you got to the scene?” Hanes asked.

  “I made sure that the perimeter of the house was secured with crime-scene tape, to preserve the integrity of the crime scene. Then I looked for forced entry to try and develop a motive,” Willette testified.

  Willette discovered that none of the doors or windows had been forced. Then he found Grady’s wallet in his pants and it contained a large amount of currency.

  “That seemed unusual. I still didn’t have a motive. It was after my second meeting with Glenn that I developed the idea of him as a suspect.”

  He related Glenn’s confession, and how it led him to Chris Wyant.

  “At 1 A.M. on December 1st, Christopher Wyant was arrested for the murder of Grady Stiles,” Willette said. Afterward, “Accompanied by Dennis Cowell, we went down U.S. 3012 to a creek and Dennis Cowell led us back into the woods, about eight to ten miles from the [crime] scene. It was a wooded area. We recovered a plastic bag. Inside was a handgun. It was loaded with a clip, a thirty-two caliber Colt.”

  “What did you do with it?”

  “We photographed the bag and sealed it in a [evidence] box. No prints were found on the gun.”

  Hanes went over and picked up the diagram of the house, which had been leaning against the clerk’s desk.

  “From your investigation, where would you say the man who fired the shot was positioned in the trailer?”

  Willette pointed on the diagram.

  “The shooter was eight to ten feet behind the victim, possibly in the hallway, right behind the table in the kitchen area.”

  Hanes put the diagram down. “No further questions.”

  Donerly’s turn.

  “Detective Willette, what was Dennis Cowell arrested for?”

  “Dennis Cowell was arrested for conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and murder one. He was later charged with accessory after the fact.”

  Through his patient questioning of Willette, Donerly tried to plant the thought in the jury’s mind that it was the mysterious Mr. Cowell who might have committed the crime. In light of Cowell’s negotiated plea of gu
ilty to the charge of accessory after the fact, and a state recommendation of probation in return for his cooperation of “truthful testimony,” it was a practical defense strategy.

  Next up was Joseph Michael Hall, a firearms expert.

  “I test-fired the Colt thirty-two,” he testified in answer to Hanes’s question.

  “What did you find?”

  “That it required seven-and-a-quarter pounds of trigger pull [pressure] to fire it. And the gun was rusty.”

  “How does the gun fire?”

  “You have to depress the trigger every time to fire. The bullet passes through the muzzle and a brass cartridge [casing] is ejected.”

  Hall also testified that the test-fired bullets matched the ones taken from the victim.

  “No further questions.”

  Again, Donerly had little cross.

  “The prosecution rests,” Hanes said.

  “Mr. Donerly, is the defense ready?” Judge Fleischer asked.

  “Yes, Your Honor. The defense calls John Palmer.”

  Palmer, forty years old, took the stand. Donerly sauntered over to the lectern, notes tucked firmly under his arm.

  “Mr. Palmer,” Donerly began, “where do you live?”

  “I live across the street from Grady.”

  “Grady Stiles?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you hear anything unusual that night coming from the Stiles residence?”

  “I heard gunshots, and an argument between two people.”

  “How long did the argument last?”

  “Ten to fifteen minutes before Grady Stiles said ‘Come back here, you motherfucker.’ Three to four seconds later, there was a gunshot.”

  He stated that he didn’t know Grady that well and that he “… didn’t see anything else.”

  After some cursory questions from the prosecution, he was excused.

  “The defense calls Janice Lee Wyant.”

  For the second day of testimony, Chris’s mother wore black stretch pants and a tight pink-and-white sweater. After being sworn in, she took the stand.

  During previous testimony, Chris had occasionally looked at the witnesses. But with his mother, he couldn’t meet her gaze and stared straight ahead into space.

  “I saw Dennis Cowell bring Chris home on the day of the murder,” Janice Lee testified. “It was 3 to 4 P.M. I saw him with Dennis.”