Murder charge refiled in 1984 fatal shooting
IDABEL — Thirty-three years after a fatal shooting at a saw mill here, the original suspect has been recharged because of new evidence.
Ernest Alvin Lewis, 65, was charged Tuesday, for a second time, with firstdegree murder.
He is accused of shooting a co-worker, Johnny Lee Smith, in the neck about 9:50 p.m. June 28, 1984, at the K.C.S. Lumber Co. in Idabel.
At the time, Lewis was 32. The victim was 26.
Lewis was initially charged with first-degree murder on July 2, 1984, based primarily on witness accounts. A judge dismissed the original charge at a preliminary hearing on Dec. 20, 1984, “for lack of evidence.”
Four witnesses had reported seeing Lewis driving a front-end loader erratically after they heard what sounded like a gunshot. They also reported seeing Lewis leave the saw mill moments later in a pickup. He had told another witness he needed to borrow the pickup because he had an emergency at home.
Investigators found a bullet in the front-end loader and suspected — but couldn’t prove — that he shot the victim with a .357-caliber pistol his mother bought from an Idabel pawnshop the month before.
Prosecutors Tuesday had to get a different judge’s permission to refile the charge.
“New evidence has been uncovered due to advancement in science from 1984 to 2017,” Deputy Attorney General Joy Lynne Mohorovicic told the judge. “In this instance, it includes DNA evidence.”
She further explained the victim’s body was exhumed in 2011 to get the DNA evidence.
Mohorovicic heads the state attorney general’s new Criminal Justice Division. Attorney General Mike Hunter said the division was created to handle the state’s most challenging cases.
“This case in particular daunted investigators and prosecutors alike. But ultimately their dedication and persistence solved the case,” Hunter said Wednesday.
The DNA evidence establishes that it was the victim’s blood that was found spattered on the outside of the front-end loader’s bucket, according to an investigator’s affidavit filed with the charge.
Also, a witness reinterviewed in 2012 remembers seeing Lewis with a .357-caliber pistol at work in the months before the shooting, according to the affidavit.
Lewis has a lengthy criminal record that includes convictions for assault, drug offenses and a sex offense. He currently is serving four years in prison in Colorado for a 2012 assault.
He insisted in a legal filing in the original murder case that he “is innocent of all charges.”