Defense uses recordings of detective
In the second day of the murder trial of Emerson Mack Abbott Jr., defense attorney Wade Hoyt IV goes after the state’s case by using previous recordings of a detective who was testifying Tuesday.
An attorney for a Floyd County man accused of gunning down his neighbors in 2015 worked to discredit the state’s case by playing audio recordings of a detective who left a recorder going on two separate occasions while he shared details of the case.
After the prosecution played over an hour of video from an interview between Floyd County police Sgt. Rusty Williams and accused murderer Emerson Mack Abbott Jr., defense attorney Wade Hoyt IV worked to pick apart the prosecution’s theory of the crime.
Tuesday was the second day in the trial of the 30-year-old Abbott, who is accused of killing his neighbors James and Myra Reeves in their Terhune Road home on Jan. 23, 2015.
And while Williams — the lead investigator for part of the case — was on the witness stand, Hoyt played a recording of him speaking about the case against Abbott with a deputy at the jail. Williams was interviewing Abbott’s jail roommate Michael David Lehr and at one point begins telling the deputy he believed Abbott would plea to the charges before the case ever made it to trial.
Hoyt pulled out a poster board with a quote from Williams in the recording scrawled in marker on it for the jury.
“Secret … we’ve got blood off the (??) that doesn’t match any of the victims,” the poster read, with the question marks signifying a point Hoyt wanted Williams to clarify from a mumbled portion of the recording.
Originally police believed blood found spattered in the bedroom where Myra Reeves was shot was not hers — and might have been Abbott’s. However, later the GBI test results showed it was her blood.
By the time police found out whose blood it was, Hoyt said, they’d already charged Abbott with murder. Without this physical evidence the case was weakened, he said, and would not have been brought to trial.
“I did my job to the best of my ability,” Williams said.
“And a young man sits here charged with a double murder,” Hoyt responded, as he walked back to his table.
This “horrific” crime, which Hoyt characterized as a big city case, brought with it a load of pressure on law enforcement for it to be solved and Abbott’s attorney said other leads fell to the wayside.
Assistant District Attorney Luke Martin asked Williams if Lehr received any benefit from speaking to investigators about Abbott. Williams said he told Lehr that if he assisted them he would write a letter to the District Attorney’s office about his cooperation.
Hoyt again referenced a
recording of Williams, saying he told Lehr he would provide him “one of those kinds of letters you could frame on a wall.”
Hoyt asked if Williams believed Abbott could have shot both the victims without having any blood or human remains on him. Williams said he believed it was possible.
However, in a recording following an interview with Abbott, as he was heading back to the police station, Williams said, “I just don’t see him being able to do that.
“He’d be covered in (blood),” he continued.
In the video footage from SunTrust Bank at 3:10 p.m. where Abbott cashed a $7,500 check — which police allege was written by Myra Reeves just before she was killed — Hoyt said he looked clean. He cashed the check around the time the call to 911 came in, when one of the Reeves friends happened upon their dead bodies.
Hoyt also took aim at the alleged motive of Abbott in killing the couple to get $7,500, and questioned why he did not take more than that amount. Prosecutors countered with information that Abbott could not have cashed a check larger than $10,000.
Abbott initially did not tell police about the check until several interviews had taken place and he was initially arrested on a theft by conversion charge Feb. 12 — almost two weeks before the murder charges were filed.
The trial heads into its third day this morning in Floyd County Superior Court Judge Bryant Durham’s courtroom.