Pretrial hearing set in murder case
A pretrial conference is set for Thursday for murder suspect James D. Willie.
Willie, 29, is charged in connection with two North Mississippi highway deaths last year. His trial for one of the deaths was scheduled for Monday, but it may be pushed back.
“This is a death penalty case and we want to make sure we have everything prepared, so I am recommend- ing it be continued,” said Dist. Atty. John Champion, whose 17th District includes DeSoto and Panola counties. “I think there is a 90 percent chance the case will be continued, but that is up to the judge.”
He added that Willie’s mental evaluation, ordered by his court-appointed attorneys, showed that an I.Q. test has been completed. Champion said the results will be discussed during the pre- trial conference, scheduled for 10:30 a.m. in Sardis at the Panola County Courthouse before Judge James McClure.
Willie, who grew up in Sardis but at the time of his arrest last year was living in Tunica with his girlfriend, has been charged with two counts of capital murder in the shooting deaths of Thomas K. Schlender and Lori Anne Carswell.
Schlender, of Raymond, Neb., was found on May 8, 2012. He had been shot to death inside his 1999 Ford F-150, which was in the median of southbound Interstate 55 near the Pope, Miss., exit in Panola County. Schlender was traveling from his Nebraska home to Florida to pick up his grandson from college.
In Carswell’s case, the
48-year- old Hernando woman was found lying in the road near her 1997 Pontiac Grand Am on the shoulder of Miss. 713 near Interstate 69 in Tunica County. Carswell, who worked at Fitzgerald’s Casino, was on her way home from work. She had been shot once in the head.
Willie will be tried in Tunica County, where Carswell’s slaying occurred, for that case but no trial date has been set.
The back-to-back roadside slayings of Carswell and Schlender set the MidSouth on edge last summer as authorities thought the shooter was posing as a police officer to get motorists to stop on the highway.
It is not known how Willie got the victims to pull over on desolate stretches of Mississippi roadways, but authorities said the motive appeared to be robbery because Schlender’s wallet, which contained about $600 for his trip, was found discarded by a Dumpster. Carswell’s wallet was also empty.
Willie was arrested by the Tunica County Sheriff’s Department on May 15, just four days after the Carswell slaying, in an unrelated case in which he was charged with the alleged rape, aggravated assault and kidnapping of a woman.
When he was arrested, authorities found a gun inside his girlfriend’s SUV. Authorities connected Willie to both shootings after ballistics tests revealed that the same gun — a 9 mm Ruger semi-automatic handgun — that had been discharged in the assault on the woman had been used in the slayings of Carswell and Schlender.
Willie was arrested on May 18 for the roadside deaths.
He is being held at the South Mississippi Correctional Institution prison in Leakesville, =where he was sent after violating his parole on a residential burglary charge in Panola County. He is serving five years for the parole violation.