Accused triple murderer takes the stand
Powell tells jury he and brother were responsible for slayings but insists they weren’t planned
TIERRA AMARILLA — John Powell took the stand during his murder trial Tuesday, admitting to jurors he and his brother were the two men captured on video in May 2018 fatally shooting three people at close range in a home near Dixon.
Neither he nor his brother, Roger Gage, had planned to kill April Browne, 42; Abraham Martinez, 36; or Kierin Guillemin, 27, Powell said.
But his testimony Tuesday, the fifth day of his trial in state District Court in the remote Rio Arriba County village of Tierra Amarilla, offered little explanation of why the brothers had carried out the slayings.
Powell, 36, and Gage, 35, are both charged with three counts of first-degree murder as well as conspiracy and tampering with evidence. Gage’s case has not yet been scheduled for trial.
The slayings were captured on Brown’s home surveillance system, which Powell said he had helped install for her.
Powell’s defense attorney, Sydney West, told jurors Tuesday that whatever happened that night in the tiny community of Cañoncito, just a few miles from Dixon, it wasn’t premeditated.
“The state wants you to believe this was a preplanned deliberate murder or some plan to burglarize that home,” West said. “Neither one is true.”
Powell told jurors he and Gage had gone to Browne’s home, where he had lived until shortly before the shooting, to retrieve some of his belongings.
They also were hoping Browne would sell Gage $40 worth of heroin, he said.
Browne met them in the living room when they arrived that night, Powell said, and he spoke briefly with her before she handed him a bag of his things and agreed to let him look around for any stray tools he might have left behind. Then she returned to her bedroom.
The next thing he knew, Powell said, his brother had fired a shot from the kitchen into Browne’s room.
West framed what happened next as Powell acting on impulse to “have his brother’s back.”
However, neither she nor the prosecutor who cross-examined Powell drew much testimony from him about why the brothers walked into Browne’s bedroom and began shooting her and the two men.
“I don’t know why I just walked in there,” Powell said.
West asked what made him pull his gun.
“I don’t know why I got my gun for,” Powell said, “… but I didn’t grab my gun until I started walking through the door into April’s room.”
“You’ve seen the video,” West said, “You’ve seen what your actions were, right?”
Powell said he had.
“Did you and your brother plan that?” West asked.
Powell said no.
Asked by West whether he believed Gage had planned the attack, Powell said, “I don’t think so.”
They also hadn’t planned to rob Browne, Powell said, but he admitted they had taken things from her home.
“What was that about?” West asked.“I don’t know,” Powell said.
Watching the video of his actions that night felt unreal to him, like watching a movie, he said.
Under questioning from Chief Deputy District Attorney Anastasia Martin, Powell told the court he had killed Browne, but he again revealed little about his motive.
“What happens when you stand an arm’s length away from somebody and you point a firearm at their head and you pull the trigger?” Martin asked. “You kill them,” Powell replied. Martin asked if he had “fired not one, not two, but three shots into April Browne.”
“I don’t remember shooting her the third time,” Powell said.
“But you remember second time?” Martin asked.
“Yes, barely,” said Powell, who wept while on the stand.
“Is it your contention here today, under oath, that when you stood next to your brother and you both raised your arms, both with firearms, at the exact same time, that that wasn’t planned?” Martin asked.
Powell said no.
Asked if it was a coincidence, he again said no.
“If it wasn’t coincidence, what was it?” Martin asked.
“Just actions, I guess,” Powell replied. “I don’t know how to explain it.”
He confirmed he shot Browne in the head. But he said he wasn’t certain he knew what he was doing at the time. Martin asked if he had fired a shot into Guillemin as well.
Powell said he had, but he didn’t believe he killed the man.
West spoke about Powell’s background Tuesday, telling jurors he and his brother had been raised in Taos by a single mother, and he had become addicted to painkillers prescribed to treat pediatric osteoporosis. He later turned to heroin for relief from his pain, she said.
Powell told jurors he and his girlfriend began using heroin after the state took away their three children because of their use of painkillers.
“A lot of the witnesses and individuals who are involved [in this story] are tied up in a world of illegal narcotics,” West said. “That’s just how it is. … This story is not unlike a lot of stories that you hear every day in this community.”
Jurors viewed more video from Browne’s home Tuesday, including clips that showed several people enter the residence after the killings and pillage belongings scattered around the bodies before police arrived. Among those in the footage were the father and brother of one of the victims, Abraham Martinez.
In an interview after Powell’s testimony, Browne’s sister, Kiva Duckworth-Moulton, said she felt his words were “rehearsed” and that “he wasn’t very remorseful about what happened.”
“We knew our sister was an addict,” Duckworth-Moulton said. “We loved her, and the family held a place in our hearts for her. We encouraged her and hoped she would be clean, but now we will never have a chance to see that happen, and she will never have a chance to try because [Powell and Gage] ended her life.
“She was 42 and in her own home when they killed her,” Duckworth-Moulton added. “We are hopeful that the judicial system does what it’s supposed to do and we can leave this awful chapter behind us.”
Closing arguments in Powell’s case are scheduled for Wednesday morning at the Tierra Amarilla courthouse.
Watching the video of his actions that night felt unreal to him, like watching a movie, Powell said.