WALDRON — David Fritschie was cowering on the ground posing no threat and not trying to run away when he was shot point blank in the head with a 20-gauge shotgun, an Arkansas State Police investigator concluded Thursday.
“He’s not trying to confront the suspect at all. He’s on the ground,” Chad Hipps told a Scott County Circuit Court jury in the opening day of testimony in the trial of Clifford Mac Ritter.
Ritter, 65, is charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the May 13, 2009, slaying of Fritschie, 37, and Charles F. Paluso, 77, of Altus, Okla. Police say Ritter shot the two men as they stood along the shoulder of Arkansas 28 in the unincorporated Coaldale community.
Hipps concluded Fritschie was on the ground because the blood on the pickup next to which Fritschie’s body was lying was splattered only on the lower portion, indicating that Fritschie was on or near the ground when he was shot.
The state police investigator testified it appeared Paluso was shot at very close range in the middleof his face. He said most of his mouth and jaw were gone. Teeth fragments were found on the ground around the body.
The bodies were found just off Arkansas 28 in the driveway of Jeannie Rideout who lived two doors down from Ritter.
Hipps said three spent 20-gauge shotgun shells also were found at the scene.
Ritter’s wife, Nina Ritter, testified that her husband rose early that morning and drank a bottle of peach brandy. She said he was drunk and turned mean when intoxicated.
She said the two of them worked on the fireplace for a house they were building on the back of their property in the rural community. Later, they had lunch, Ritter took a shower, went to bed for a time then picked up his shotgun and left, saying he had something he had to do.
He returned about 15 minutes later, saying nothing to her about his errand, she said. He laid the shotgun on a table and sat in his porch swing.
Even though the Ritters lived close to where the two men were killed, Nina Ritter said she never heard anygun shots. She said she was washing clothes in a washing machine in a bus parked on the property.
She said her husband sat in his porch swing until he saw police cars speed by. He then got back into his red Isuzu Rodeo pickup and drove off in the direction of the sirens.
Members of a crew working for M. Phillips Construction Co. of Magazine who were installing water lines along Arkansas 28 encountered Ritter twice on the day of the shootings.
One crew member, Doyle Wilks, said Ritter walked out to the highway where they were burying the water line in front of his house late in the morning.
He said Ritter spoke with them briefly and joked about the crew’s track hoe being stuck in the mud.
Around mid-afternoon,Wilks said he heard three shots: Two quick shots and then a third. Minutes later, he said, Ritter drove up in the red Rodeo and said he fired some shots and asked if that frightened them.
Wilks said he went out into the street to talk to Ritter in his pickup. He said Ritter then got out of the pickup and angrily screamed, “‘Y’all digging across my place? Y’all digging across my place?’”
Wilks said he smelled alcohol on Ritter’s breath, and noticed a shotgun or rifle on the pickup’s passenger seat and that Ritter had his hand on what he identified as a pistol grip on his hip.
“I smelled alcohol and saw the pistol and shotgun and backed off,” Wilks said. “I said, ‘We’re just putting the pipe in the ground.’”
Just then, a car on the highway came up behind Ritter’s pickup and began honking the horn, Wilks said. He said Ritter got back into the pickup and drove off.
After her husband returned home from his errand, Nina Ritter said, Rideout phoned them and she handed the phone to Clifford Ritter. She said Rideout was calling to say she found two bodies in her driveway. She said after that call, Clifford Ritter called 911 to report Rideout’s alarm.
Rideout told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette last year she was so startled by the discovery of the gruesome scene in her driveway she couldn’t think who to call. It was only after calling the Ritters that she thought to call 911, she said at the time.
When Clifford Ritter arrived at the scene of the shooting, he parked 25 yards from Rideout’s driveway, Scott County Sheriff Cody Carpenter testified. One of the work crew members recognized the pickup as the one driven by the man who confronted them earlier, he said.
Carpenter said he approached Ritter who told him, “‘You’re not pinning this on me.’” When Carpenter asked what Ritter meant, he said Ritter replied “‘You know damned well what I’m talking about.’”
He said he detained Ritter, in part, because of a red bruise he saw on Ritter’s right shoulder that was consistent with impact marks from firing a shoulder-held weapon like a rifle or shotgun.
Jurors hearing the case also listened to the state police’s recording of the twohour interview with Ritter during which he said he had no memory of the shooting, despite being confronted by evidence and statements of witnesses. Eventually he admitted to owning a 20-gauge shotgun but was unshaken in his lack of memory of the shooting.
“If I done what you say that I did, I absolutely don’t know,” he said.
Testimony continues at 9 a.m. today.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 08/27/2010