POTEAU, Okla. --An Arkansan's attorney putting up a trial defense regarding charges of first-degree murder and forcible sodomy told jurors Tuesday his client's brother cut the throat of Briana Ault and left her nude body in an Oklahoma pond 5 1/2 years ago.
Gretchen Mosley, who is heading the defense team for Elvis Aaron Thacker of Crawford County, said she would show Johnathen Thacker was a sexual predator who wanted to become a serial killer, but put the blame for Ault's murder on his older brother.
"I will do my best to show you Johnathen was the killer," she said. "That's our defense."
The state is seeking the death penalty against 28-year-old Elvis Thacker.
Mosley, who is with the Oklahoma Indigent Defense System, and LeFlore County, Okla., Assistant District Attorney Margaret Nicholson made their opening statements to the jury of six men and six women. The panel includes four alternate jurors for what LeFlore County District Judge Jonathan Sullivan said could be a six-week trial.
Nicholson told jurors the state would prove Elvis Thacker tricked Ault, 22, into giving him and his brother a ride early Sept. 13, 2010, in exchange for $50 and a tank of gasoline. But when the Fort Smith woman picked them up, they directed her to drive to an isolated pond off Texas Road just over the state line from Arkansas in Pocola, Okla.
Nicholson said Johnathen Thacker, 27, who has pleaded guilty to the murder and sodomy charges to avoid the death penalty, would testify he and his brother were sending text messages to Ault's phone the night before the murder, including the request for the ride.
Mosley told jurors Johnathen Thacker acted alone, sent the text messages to Ault and lured her to the pond.
Elvis Thacker, Mosley said, was in a south Fort Smith apartment recovering from fractures in two leg bones and a torn knee ligament he suffered in a car crash nearly a month earlier. His leg was in a brace and he needed crutches to get around.
Nicholson said Johnathen Thacker would testify once at the pond, Elvis Thacker forced Ault to perform oral sex on both of them, then marched her to the pond to wash the semen evidence from her mouth.
Elvis Thacker then tried to drown Ault in the pond but, failing that, cut her throat, nearly decapitating her, Nicholson said. Fisherman Justin Coble of Fort Smith testified Tuesday he found the nude body of Ault floating face up in the pond that afternoon.
Mosley said because of Thacker's injured leg, he wouldn't have been able to force Ault to the pond, negotiating the rough, quarter-mile vehicle track in the dark.
Nicholson said law officers would testify Elvis Thacker confessed to killing Ault after a Fort Smith police officer shot him during the attempt to arrest the brothers on suspicion of Ault's death and an unrelated rape of another woman days before Ault's murder.
She said a Fort Smith emergency medical technician would testify Elvis Thacker made the statement as he lay in an ambulance bleeding from two gunshot wounds.
"'I killed that girl. I did it. I'll tell you all about it if you get me some help,' " Nicholson said jurors would hear in testimony during the trial.
Mosley told jurors Elvis Thacker has recanted his confession.
If they had looked into Johnathen Thacker's background, she said, investigators would have had reason to suspect him of killing Ault. A psychiatrist would testify about the physical, emotional and sexual abuse Johnathen Thacker endured as a child and how it shaped his behavior as an adult, she said.
Elvis Thacker's false confession was pressured, in part, by "the toxic nature of the family he came from," Mosley said.
She said his mother, Marsha Gregory, doted on Johnathen but didn't love Elvis.
Gregory was the only person Elvis Thacker was allowed to see while he was in the hospital. She visited her son Oct. 8, 2010, the day he awoke from his coma, and told him to lie to the police, Mosley said.
"She tells Elvis if you ever want anything to do with your family again, you better take this off Johnathen," Mosley said Gregory told her son.
Her visit came just before investigators arrived to interview Elvis Thacker again. In that interview, he repeated he was responsible for Ault's murder.
Testimony resumes today.
NW News on 04/13/2016