Trial begins in kidnapping, beating case
Matthew Tressler’s hands and feet were bound. He’d been beaten with a bat, cut with garden shears and he was sure that he was going to be killed.
Tressler was the first witness to take the stand Monday in Mitchell Overhand’s trial before 2nd Judicial District Judge Briana Zamora. Overhand is one of three people accused in Tressler’s August 2017 kidnapping and torture, which prosecutors say is linked to the death of John Soyka.
But Tressler said repeatedly that Overhand was the one who talked his co-defendants, Chase Smotherman and Mariah Ferry, into releasing him.
“I don’t know how the (expletive) he convinced them to get me out of there, but he did and I’m very grateful,” Tressler told the jury.
During the beating, Tressler said, his attackers showed him a photo of Soyka’s dead and sexually mutilated body.
“He was terrified that the same was going to happen to him,” prosecutor David Waymire said in his opening statement. He said Overhand “seemed to be the alpha dog” and “either directly as a principal or as an accessory” participated in the attack.
“He conspired to do all those same acts with Mariah Ferry and Chase Smotherman,” he said.
Waymire said Soyka’s death and Tressler’s kidnapping were related to around $2,000 worth of marijuana stolen from Smotherman, which Tressler said he knew nothing about.
The minor charges Overhand faced in connection with the homicide were dismissed by a judge last week. Prosecutors agreed he would not face murder charges after he helped police find Soyka’s body, which had been dumped west of Rio Rancho. But during his trial this week, he is facing eight felony charges, including kidnapping, aggravated battery, bribery of a witness and conspiracy.
Tressler testified that Overhand helped him limp out of Smotherman’s home, where the beating took place. Overhand took the man to his home, fed him and gave him a beer, which Tressler said he was unable to drink because the attack left a hole in his cheek. He was freed the next morning.
George Harrison, Overhand’s defense attorney, said that the jury would know by the end of the trial that Overhand was innocent. And as he cross-examined Tressler, he pointed out that much of his testimony had been “pretty helpful to my client.” Overhand infamously killed his parents as a teenager in the 1980s.
“My client was there, my client knew that Chase and Mariah had killed his friend John the day before, and done it in a brutal manner. He knew they were beating him up and threatening to kill him … and he intervened,” Harrison said. “He convinced them not to do it.”
The trial is expected to last through Wednesday.