Key user testifies in Gillean trial

Ex-student tells of friendship with ex-UCA chief of staff

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/GAVIN LESNICK - 03/10/2014 - Former University of Central Arkansas Chief of Staff Jack Gillean arrives at Van Buren Circuit Court in Clinton Monday before the first day of testimony in his trial.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/GAVIN LESNICK - 03/10/2014 - Former University of Central Arkansas Chief of Staff Jack Gillean arrives at Van Buren Circuit Court in Clinton Monday before the first day of testimony in his trial.

CLINTON - Cameron Stark testified Monday that he and former University of Central Arkansas Chief of Staff Jack Gillean became such good friends that Stark spent up to five nights a week at Gillean’s apartment and that Gillean willingly gave him keys to burglarize professors’ offices and steal tests.

Testifying in the first day of Gillean’s commercial-burglary trial, Stark said he and Gillean had a “good friendship” and that Gillean stood guard for him during the first burglary at Lewis Science Center in early 2011.

Looking at jurors, Stark, 25, recounted how he met Gillean, 57, in 2010 through Andrew Linn, a since-fired financial-aid employee at UCA from whom Stark stole four prescription pills in June 2012.

Stark and Gillean got to be such pals that they’d drink together, Stark said, and Gillean eventually helped him land a student-worker job in the UCA president’s office.

“I was … bringing my girlfriends over to his apartment,” said Stark, who was wearing a dark sports jacket, trousers and cowboy boots with his short hair in a spiked style. “I was staying over at his … apartment three, four and five nights a week.”

Defense attorney Tim Dudley had told prospective jurors last week that they would hear testimony about Gillean’s lifestyle, including sexual relations with other men. But Dudley said Stark and Gillean did not have a sexual relationship - a statement to which Stark later affirmed on the stand.

Gillean is charged with six counts of commercial burglary, a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine on each count. He also is charged with one felony count of fraudulent insurance acts and one count of issuing a false financial statement, a misdemeanor, but will be tried on those charges later.

Judge Charles E. Clawson Jr. moved Gillean’s trial from Conway to Van Buren County Circuit Court in Clinton because of pretrial publicity.

In opening statements Monday, Dudley said Stark knew where Gillean kept the master keys in his apartment and that Stark had a key to Gillean’s apartment. Stark took the keys without Gillean’s knowledge, Dudley said.

“When he got caught, he did what a lot of folks [do] … he made a deal,” Dudley said.

“He basically told the police, if you don’t charge me, if you leave me alone, I’ll give you Jack Gillean,” Dudley said. “The police bought his story.”

Gillean, a former deputy attorney general, occasionally took notes and appeared somber and attentive throughout testimony Monday.

On the stand, Stark recalled that he and Gillean were riding in Stark’s Hummer during a “snow day” at UCA. When they were about 100 yards from the Lewis Science Center, Stark said he asked Gillean if he had a key to that building and Gillean replied that he did.

They returned to the science center, where Stark said Gillean opened the door. Stark said he then went inside a professor’s office, got on the teacher’s computer and printed off a test he was about to take. Gillean stood outside the office to watch “for security,” Stark testified.

Stark said he took pictures of the computer, which the professor later testified that he never turned off, and said, “I was in shock. … I had an extremely difficult test coming up. I was in shock that I was able to get the exam.”

Stark said he shared information from the test with two other students, brothers James and Jared Santiago.

Gillean later entrusted his key to him, Stark said. But in March 2011, Stark said he tried unsuccessfully to use it to steal an organic chemistry test from a teacher’s Laney Hall office.

“I told Jack that the master key wouldn’t work. He said he’d check into it” and that two keys were required to get into some offices, Stark testified. “He gave me a [second] key that eventually worked.”

The men’s relationship soured in about April 2011, when Stark said he wrecked Gillean’s motorcycle.

“He fired me” from the president’s office and wouldn’t give out the keys anymore, Stark said.

“I had to have that key,” Stark said, so he texted Ryan Scott, the young man who prosecutors said was Gillean’s live-in lover at the time. Stark said he never got the key from Scott, so he skipped the test.

In opening statements earlier Monday, Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Joan Shipley said Stark “knew he’d do whatever he had to do to repair that friendship [with Gillean], so he did” and eventually got the keys back.

Gillean resigned from his UCA job June 15, 2012, after UCA President Tom Courtway asked him about a “grand master” key. Stark pulled one of the keys from his pocket and gave it to police when they questioned him days earlier about the theft of pills from Linn’s office desk on campus. Gillean has been charged only in test-related burglaries.

Stark was given immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony, as were three other current or former students, according to court records.

Under cross-examination, Stark acknowledged that he had told police he and Gillean had exchanged text messages about the keys, but that there were no such texts in 491 pages of Stark’s own text messages handed to him by Dudley.

Dudley asked Stark if his explanation was that those texts just got left out.

“Yes, sir,” Stark replied.

Dudley also sought to undermine expected corroborating testimony from Jeff Scarbrough, who knew Stark and Gillean. Under cross-examination, Stark acknowledged that he called Scarbrough at 4:30 a.m. to warn him that the UCA police would be calling him for corroboration.

“Jeff was very unhappy with me,” but he was also “really disappointed with Jack,” Stark said.

Stark said he had not told Scarbrough about the keys, but that he had earlier learned that Scarbrough somehow knew what had been going on.

Also Monday, William “Kimmy” Manning II, who works in UCA’s lock shop, testified that the university keeps records of when and where employees used key cards.

He cited more than one time when when Gillean’s key card was used in evening or early morning hours to enter Laney Hall. But after May 2011, Manning said, “It looks like [only] Wingo Hall,” where Gillean worked.

Manning said he never replaced Gillean’s card because of loss or theft.

Benjamin Rowley, a UCA associate professor of biology, also testified that in 2010 he got an email from Gillean, urging him to let Stark enroll in a microbiology class. Rowley said he limited the number of enrollees in the laboratory course for safety reasons and told Gillean he couldn’t help.

The email “stuck in my brain,” Rowley said, because no other administrator had ever made such a request to him.

Testimony is set to resume at 9 a.m. today.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/11/2014

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