Trial

working five days a week at Care and Share Inc. in Gravette.

She said she loved her missionary work and had traveled to at least 10 countries to help others.

The woman said she couldn’t recognize her attacker. She met Rickman when she hired Eric Burchette to paint her house. Burchette hired Rickman to help him with the job and he introduced them.

The jury watched a recording where Rickman confessed to detectives he raped her.“Are you a monster?” Susanne Matthews, a detective with the Benton County Sheriff’s Office, asked Rickman at the beginning of the interview.

Rickman admitted to using methamphetamine and drinking alcohol Oct. 2, but he only remembered “bits and pieces” about beating and raping the woman.

Rickman loudly cried throughout the interview and admitted going to the woman’s house Oct. 3 and claiming to have car trouble. Rickman said he forced his way into her home, blindfolded her, took her to her bedroom and raped her.

He told detectives he didn’t plan on killing the woman and didn’t give any explanation for the attack.

After the prosecution rested their case, Rickman took the stand. He was the only witness to testify in his defense.

He said the day before the attack he started drinking malt liquor beer after he finished working and bought a little more than a quarter of a gram of methamphetamine.

Once home he said he smoked and snorted the meth. He said he typically didn’t use that amount of the drug. Rickman denied he was a meth addict.

He said he couldn’t remember the 22-mile drive to the woman’s house, but he kind of remembers being at the woman’s door.

“I don’t remember pushing the door open,” Rickman said.

Rickman said he remembers wrapping a cloth around the woman’s eyes.

“What happened next?” Lee Warden, one of Rickman’s attorneys, asked him.

Rickman paused a few moments and said the woman was naked, but he didn’t remember taking the woman’s clothes off. He remembered walking the woman upstairs to her bedroom. He said he put the woman on the bed and had sex with her.

He said he remembers “spanking” the woman with a belt and abusing the woman with an object.

“I don’t remember much after that,” he said. “I remember like coming out of daze.”

He said he remembered laying on the bed with the woman and being disgusted with himself. He said he felt guilty and he decided to wash her bed sheets.

Rickman said he still was drunk from the beer and under the influence of methamphetamine.

“I was really messed up under both of them,” he said.

Rickman at one point referred to the crime as an accident. “I was so out of it on drugs that I was not in the right frame of mind,” he said in an attempt to explain his reasoning.

Both sides rested their cases Wednesday.

The trial continues this morning. Circuit Judge Brad Karren will read instructions to the jury. The attorneys will give closing statements and the jury will begin deliberation.