Murder suspect not guilty in partial verdict

Prosecutors plan to retry him

The jury returned only a partial verdict Tuesday, finding Raymond Daniel Posey III, accused of mur- dering a woman in Nanjemoy in 2011, not guilty on nine of 13 counts, including first-degree murder.

However, Posey, 24, of Nanjemoy remains on a no bond status currently, and the state plans to retry him on the remaining counts that the jury could not agree upon: conspiracy to commit first-degree mur- der, which carries a life sentence, second-degree murder, robbery and conspiracy to commit robbery.

With limited physical and biological evidence, the case presented by assistant state’s attorneys Francis Granados and Jonathan Beattie relied heavily on witness testimony from friends of Posey and two inmates, who said he confessed to the killing, and evidence that may indicate

a consciousness of guilt, including a suicide at- tempt around the time the skeletal remains of Crystal Anderson, 29, were found near Purse State Park, and his numerous communications with witnesses from jail, in which he seemed to offer thousands of dol- lars to certain people to not testify against him.

Perhaps the strongest evidence against Posey though was a statement made by his co-defendant Darrayl John Wil- son, 25, that the jur y was not permitted to hear because the defense would not have an opportunity to cross-examine him, as he awaits his own trial scheduled to begin Monday. During a motion’s hearing outside the jury’s presence, Granados proffered that during his third interview with police, Wilson told investigators he had been in the car while Posey shot Anderson, a much different story than what both defendants initially told police, that they had dropped Anderson off in Forestville that night. The prosecutors were only allowed to tell the jury that Wilson’s alibi story changed.

Had the jury known the substance of Wilson’s statement, it would have added context to the repeated attempts made by Posey to communi- cate with him from the Charles County Detention Center by phone, his directions to a third-par- ty to contact Wilson, and a note intended for Wilson that was inter- cepted by correctional officers, a transaction that was also captured on surveillance video. In one recorded jailhouse call, Posey seemed to instruct a woman to send him a text, “I know what you said … don’t do that” and “follow the code.” In the note, “I stuck to the story … don’t talk about nothing over the phone.”

The state believes that on the night of July 26, 2011, the defendants drove Anderson from a house party in Nanjemoy to Prince George’s County, where she picked up PCP from her supplier, a drug she regularly sold and used, before they returned to the area and robbed her, shot her to death, and threw her body over a guardrail, down a ravine. Posey, they believe, was in part motivated by a $2,000 drug debt owed to Anderson by Posey’s brother, and her attempts to seek him out.

She remained missing until Jan. 2, 2012 when an unsuspecting hiker stumbled upon a boot with her leg bone protruding. In the following days, specialized K-9s helped police recover more bones, a little more than half of Anderson’s skeletal remains, though no cause of death could be determined by medical examiners. Of the remains recovered, there were no signs of injury. No murder weapon or shell casings were ever found.

After nearly four years of investigation, Posey was arrested at his family’s Nanjemoy home, indicted by a grand jury in March 2015, and Wilson was indicted in July 2015.

Throughout the trial, his defense team, headed by Kevin Collins and Chase Johnson, argued that the state became intent on building a case against Posey, rather than conducting an objective investigation, and, because of her highrisk lifestyle as a PCP dealer, that there were several other suspects who would have had a motive to kill Anderson. The defense also noted the possibility of a drug overdose, as her cause of death could not be determined through autopsy.

Posey elected not to testify.

In addition to the remaining counts in the murder case, Posey also faces a May 2016 indict- ment in which he was charged with 28 counts related to witness tampering, including nine felonies.