Witness: Murder victim, 8, raped
He says man told of keeping girl in trash can 2 days before killing
POCAHONTAS — Eightyear-old Felicia Elliott was kept inside a trash can and repeatedly raped for two days before Billy Green submerged her in a creek near his Warm Springs home and then cut her throat in 1998, a prisoner testified during Green’s capital-murder retrial in Randolph County Circuit Court on Thursday.
Phillip Daren Shockey, now an inmate at the Federal Correctional Institute in Fort Worth, said Green seemed to relish his tale about killing the girl.
“People embellish stories in prison quite often,” said Shockey, who is serving an eight-year federal sentence for mail fraud. “But no one would ever say they were a pedophile.”
The two shared a bunking area in the Arkansas Department of Correction in 2008.
Green, 57, is accused in the July 29, 1998, slayings of Carl Elliott, 30; his wife, Lisa Elliott, 27; and their children, Gregory, 6, and Felicia, in northern Randolph County.
Prosecutors first sought the death penalty against Green in his retrial, but on Monday, Prosecuting Attorney Henry Boyce of Newport dropped that request. He wouldn’t comment on his reasons.
Green was convicted of four counts of capital murder and one count of kidnapping on May 21, 2004, and sentenced to death. The state Supreme Court overturned that conviction in 2006, ruling that improper testimony was allowed in his first trial and ordering the new trial.
Prosecutors contended at the first trial that the Elliott family was killed as a retaliation because Carl Elliott stole several marijuana plants from Green.
However, Shockey testified that the family was killed because Green’s son, Charles “Chad” Green, had sexually assaulted Felicia on several occasions and her parents had found out.
“He [Billy Green] told me Chad had been messing with the 8-year-old,” Shockey said in court Thursday, the second day of Billy Green’s retrial. “He said she told her daddy, and he was going to tell the sheriff.”
Dale Adams, one of Billy Green’s court-appointed defense attorneys, asked Shockey in cross examination if he was exchanging testimony for a reduction of his remaining time to serve in prison.
“They made it plain at the beginning that they may not get anything for me,” Shockey said of the prosecutors he spoke with about Billy Green.
“What he told me that he did to that little girl made me sick,” he said. “I had a daughter who was 8 the last time I saw her. Nobody deserves what happened to her.”
Shockey said Chad Green lured Carl Elliott to the Eleven Point River near his Dalton home during a storm and shot him.
“He said Chad went to the [Elliott] house and killed the boy — hit him in the head,” Shockey said. “He said Chad stabbed the mom with a knife and then took the girl.”
A medical examiner tes- tified Wednesday that both Lisa and Gregory Elliott were bludgeoned with a tire iron. They also were stabbed — the boy with a tire iron, and his mother with a knife.
Chad Green was convicted of four counts of capital murder and one count of kidnapping in the case in September 2011. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Shockey said Billy Green had confided in him in prison after Green misunderstood Shockey, 47, joking about liking “younger girls.”
Shockey said he had asked another inmate who received numerous letters from a girlfriend if he could find someone to write letters to Shockey.
“He said all his friends were younger, like in their 20s,” Shockey said. “I said, ‘The younger the better.’
“Billy walked in and heard that,” Shockey testified. “He smiled and asked what was the youngest girl I’d ever been with. When he heard I liked younger girls, he thought we were kindred spirits.”
The inmate’s testimony seemed to shock the 10-woman, two-man jury, who sat quietly and took notes. Billy Green didn’t look at Shockey, and jotted notes on a yellow legal pad instead.
Shockey said Billy Green kept Felicia trapped inside a trash can for two days and secured the lid with thick elastic cords.
He said Green decided to kill her on Aug. 1, 1998.
“Billy said, ‘All good things got to come to an end,’ and then he said he carried her to the woods,” Shockey said.
“He said the last thing Felicia said to him was ‘Please don’t hurt me,’” Shockey said.
Earlier Thursday, former Randolph County Sheriff Rob Samons testified about finding the bodies of Gregory and Lisa Elliott on July 30, 1998.
He said he went to their Dalton home after Lisa Elliott’s stepmother, Virginia Miller, called and said Lisa Elliott lay dead on her porch. Miller said she could not get out of the home because her stepdaughter’s body blocked the door.
Samons went to the Elliotts’ home, but didn’t see anyone at first.
“I knocked on the door,” Samons said. “It was open about 6 inches. It was extremely quiet inside, but I could hear the television on.”
Samons said he drew his weapon and entered the home, then saw Gregory’s body on the living room floor.
Inside, he found blood in the dining room and kitchen, blood splattered on a child’s toy telephone on a desk and blood pooled on the kitchen linoleum.
He found Lisa Elliott’s body on her stepmother’s porch after walking behind the Elliotts’ home. A bloody handprint stained the window of Miller’s front door.
Boyce plans to call a former friend of Chad Green as a witness today and several Green family members. He said he expects the trial will last through next week.