Prosecutor: Teen witnessed 2003 slaying

CLOVIS — Telia Vancleave was 15 when Jessie Clyde "J.C." Tucker was killed at his automobile salvage yard on Sept. 4, 2003, west of Clovis.

Deputy District Attorney Brian Stover told jurors on Tuesday that Vancleave witnessed William Hadix, her mother's boyfriend, shoot Tucker, but it took her years to tell the story because she feared Hadix. That's why it took so long for police to charge Hadix with Tucker's slaying.

And that, Hadix's attorney Gary Mitchell told jurors, is "what the state's case is built on. That and that alone. Just this enhanced story," he said. "At the end of the day, a man gets accused of this based on an exaggerated lie."

Hadix, 69, is charged with first-degree murder, robbery and tampering with evidence in connection with Tucker's death. He was arrested two years ago in eastern Illinois.

His trial, which began with jury selection on Monday, is expected to last through Friday.

At the time of the killing, Hadix worked as a handyman for Tucker, a 67-year-old businessman known to make quick deals and to carry a large wad of cash for just that purpose, Stover said in his opening arguments.

"(Tucker) was gunned down, unarmed, in his own office," Stover said. "(Hadix) shot him, shot him again, and then, execution-style, shot him in the back of the head."

Stover said investigators interviewed over 100 individuals but were unable to gather enough evidence to make an arrest before the case went cold after a decade. Then Vancleave, the youngest of three children living under Hadix's roof, came forward.

"She revealed that at 15 and a half years old, she had indeed been picked up at school (by Hadix) and driven to (Tucker's business)," Stover told the court on Tuesday. After waiting in the car some time, Vancleave "got bored and went inside," where she "saw (Tucker) lunge at (Hadix), who had the firearm, and the gun went off."

She ran back to the car and pretended to Hadix she was sick and sleeping, Stover said. In the intervening years, Hadix "laughed and bragged about the murder of (Tucker) ... and (Vancleave was) terrified. And she kept that secret, and she held that secret, for years and years. And you will see, she is terrified to this day of (Hadix)," Stover said.

But Mitchell told jurors in his opening arguments that there is no physical evidence, such as fingerprints, DNA or ballistics material, linking Hadix with Tucker's death.

Mitchell urged the jury's attention and patience in the coming days of the trial.

"Our defense is he did not do it," he said.

Much of Tuesday's witness testimony concerned the initial discovery of Tucker's death and its particulars.

• Barbara Witford said she was Tucker's fiancee at the time and the first to find him dead. She had seen him off to work the morning of Sept. 4, 2003, and became concerned when he didn't come home for supper that evening. Around 9:30 p.m., after hearing his daughters had no word of him, she went to his business — on the 1600 block of U.S. 60-84 West — and found him on the floor of his office in a pool of blood.

"When I opened the door, the door just barely cleared his head," she said. "Of course, I was kind of screaming at him for a response."

Witford said she called 911 and was asked to check his pulse.

"I managed to check his neck, but he was like an ice cube at that time," she said.

Of Tucker's relationship with Hadix, she said she "felt like they tolerated each other because (Tucker) was a boss and (Hadix was) a person who did the work."

• Leinani Roubison said she was also concerned for her stepfather, Tucker, after speaking with Witford earlier that evening. She showed up to the scene just as Witford was calling for help, then saw Tucker and fell to the ground herself.

Roubison remembered her stepfather as "a good father" and "a happy person" who "liked to make people laugh." She said Hadix worked for Tucker and that "he was a friend of the family."

• Waldo Casarez, a retired deputy of 32 years with the Curry County Sheriff Office, said he was working the day of Tucker's killing and confirmed that "the only (crime scene DNA) that was verified was to Mr. Tucker himself."

• CCSO Chief Investigator Sandy Loomis has about 45 years of experience as an investigator, first with the military and since 1993 with Curry County. He was on night shift patrol when Tucker died and arrived to the scene soon after 10:30 p.m. In court Tuesday, he drew rough designs of the layout of Tucker's business yard and office on large white sheets of butcher paper. He described in detail the first moments of the investigation, from the orientation of Tucker's body to the discovery days later of a bullet lodged in his office wall.

Loomis said investigators identified gunshot wounds corresponding to three bullets — "missiles" as they were called in court — two of which were recovered inside Tucker's body, and the last found in his office. Mitchell disputed that discovery, saying "we simply don't know if that was around or went through the body or not."

Mitchell also said the bullets found inside Tucker could have come from any one of more than 200 types of firearms, and confirmed with Loomis that no such gun had ever been found on Hadix or his property.

• Forensic pathologist Dr. Ross Reichard flew in Tuesday from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, to testify as an expert witness. On Sept. 5, 2003, he assisted in Tucker's autopsy at the University of New Mexico's Office of the Medical Investigator, where he was on a fellowship. He said on the stand there was no way of telling the sequence of Tucker's three gunshot wounds, but said there were no defensive injuries evident on his hands or arms.

Of Tucker's three wounds, Reichard said any one of them could have been sufficient to kill or paralyze.

He identified shots to the back of the head, the back left abdomen and the left side of his chest, with the latter grazing his left arm, penetrating his chest and exiting through the right side of his body.