POTEAU, Okla. -- A LeFlore County District Court jury Friday heard the confession of a Crawford County man on trial for the 2010 slashing murder of 22-year-old Briana Ault of Fort Smith.
"'I did it,'" Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation agent Shawn Ward told the jury Elvis Aaron Thacker volunteered when Ward went to Sparks Regional Medical Center in Fort Smith on Sept. 15, 2010, to question Thacker.
"When I asked what did you do, he said 'I killed Briana.' When I asked how, he said, 'I cut her throat,'" Ward said.
The jury of six men and six women heard the testimony at the close of the first week of testimony in Thacker's trial. He is charged with first-degree murder and forcible sodomy, and Oklahoma is seeking the death penalty.
Thacker, 28, and his brother, Johnathen, 27, were arrested that evening at an apartment complex in south Fort Smith on Arkansas warrants charging them with the rape of a Fort Smith woman 11 days before Ault's death. The cases were unrelated.
Ward said the Oklahoma agency also wanted to interview the brothers, especially Elvis Thacker, about Ault's death.
During the arrest at the apartment, Elvis Thacker stabbed a Fort Smith police detective and was subdued after being shocked four times with a Taser and shot twice by police, according to testimony.
Ward took Thacker's confession as Thacker lay on a hospital bed at Sparks waiting to go into surgery for the two gunshot wounds. Ward testified that he wanted to interview Elvis Thacker in case he died from his wounds.
In addition to the confession, Ward said, Thacker said he and his brother burned Ault's car in Fort Smith by shoving the sleeves from their shirts down into the gas tank and igniting the sleeves with a lighter before running back to the apartment where they were staying.
After that, Ward said, "he wanted the hospital to fix him and didn't want to talk anymore."
Thacker has since recanted his confession.
Ward said investigators wanted to talk to the Thacker brothers because records of Ault's cellphone showed the last text messages to her before she died came from Thacker's cellphone.
Friends also had told investigators that Ault left a bar about 2 a.m. Sept. 13, 2010, to pick up and give a ride to an ex-boyfriend. She wasn't seen alive again.
After his arrest, Johnathen Thacker told investigators that his brother lured Ault to pick up the brothers with the story about needing the ride but intended to rob her because he thought Ault had won $1,600 at a casino.
Johnathen Thacker testified earlier this week that Elvis Thacker directed Ault to drive down Texas Road to a secluded pond just across the Arkansas state line in Pocola, Okla., where Elvis Thacker often went fishing.
He pulled a straight razor on Ault, Johnathen Thacker said, forced her to perform oral sex on both brothers, anally raped her, made cut marks on her back with the razor and then cut her throat after unsuccessfully trying to drown her in the pond.
To avoid the death penalty, Johnathen Thacker pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and forcible sodomy in April 2014 in exchange for his testimony against his brother. He told jurors that he expected to be sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Ward said he believed Johnathen Thacker's story because he knew about the cut marks on Ault's back. Investigators were careful to keep that detail secret from the public, media and even other law enforcement officers, he said.
Elvis Thacker's attorneys with the Oklahoma Indigent Defense System have told the jury that they believe that Johnathen Thacker killed Ault by himself and blamed the murder on Elvis Thacker.
Gretchen Mosley, the head of Thacker's defense team, has told jurors that Elvis Thacker was laid up with a broken leg he suffered about a month before the murder. She said witnesses have said he had not left the Fort Smith apartment the entire time he and his brother stayed there.
Johnathen Thacker had testified that Elvis Thacker drove Ault's orange Chevrolet Cavalier to a wooded area at Tulsa and South 36th streets to burn the car. Afterward, both men ran together back to the Tulsa Square apartments where they were staying.
But in cross examining Ward on Friday, Mosley pointed out that an employee of the Southern Steel and Wire plant on Tulsa Street saw the Cavalier speed by Tulsa Street early on Sept. 13, 2010, and later saw one person run from the scene.
Mosley also questioned Ward about the video surveillance he discovered from Greenes Energy Group at 5015 S. 35th St., a block from where the car burned, that showed one person walking past the Utica Street intersection around the time the Thackers were alleged to have burned the car.
Mosley has said the plant worker's observations and the lone passer-by bolster the defense theory that Johnathen Thacker acted alone.
Oklahoma is expected to complete presentation of its case when the trial reconvenes at 8:30 a.m. Monday.
State Desk on 04/16/2016