State rests in murder trial; Defense starts

POTEAU, Okla. -- Elvis Thacker said he hoped Fort Smith police would kill him the night he was arrested in 2010 because he wanted to die for what he did to Briana Ault.

Thacker, 28, is on trial in LeFlore County District Court on charges of first-degree murder and forcible sodomy in the Sept. 13, 2010, murder of the 22-year-old woman from Fort Smith at a secluded pond just across the state line in Pocola, Okla.

Oklahoma is seeking the death penalty against Thacker, who is from Crawford County.

Fort Smith emergency medical technician Veronica Harris told the jury Tuesday she heard Thacker admit killing Ault after Thacker was loaded into an ambulance with two gunshot wounds.

"'I killed that girl,'" Harris recalled Thacker saying. "'I was going to kill myself anyway for what I did to that girl.'"

Harris, one of the state's final witnesses before resting its case Tuesday, said she called for an officer after she heard Thacker's confession the night he and his brother, Johnathen, 27, were arrested at a Fort Smith apartment.

Elvis Thacker was shot twice by police after he stabbed and cut police detective James Melson during the raid of the apartment, according to witnesses.

According to testimony from then-detective Tammy Ferrari, Thacker told her from a hospital bed he didn't mean to kill Melson but hoped the attack would prompt police to kill him.

"'I wanted them to kill me,'" she quoted Thacker as saying. "'I was really wanting to die.'"

After First Assistant District Attorney Margaret Nicholson announced to the six-man, six-woman jury the state had completed its case, Julie Cox was called as the first witness by Thacker's defense team.

Under cross-examination, Cox acknowledged she wrote to Thacker in a Nov. 24, 2010, letter, "'If I would take you up there, would you have done to me what you did to her?'"

Cox, who said she treated the brothers as a surrogate mother, said Thacker called her the day before Ault's murder asking for a ride to Cedarville so the brothers could move their belongings from a house there. She said she refused but couldn't explain why.

That was the same scenario the state contends the brothers used the next night with Ault. Witnesses said Elvis Thacker texted Ault and asked for a ride to Texas Road, offering her $50 and a tank of gas.

According to Johnathen Thacker, his brother directed Ault to drive them to the pond, where Elvis Thacker pulled a knife on her, forced her to undress, forced her to perform oral sex on both the brothers, cut her on the back, anally raped her, tried to drown her in the pond and then cut her throat.

Johnathen Thacker pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in April 2014 in exchange for his testimony against his brother and to avoid the death penalty. He testified last week he expected to be sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Criminalists with the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation also said Tuesday there was no DNA or other forensic evidence connecting Elvis and Johnathen Thacker to Ault's death.

They testified about tests done on oral, vaginal and anal swabs taken from Ault for DNA testing, of tests performed on stains on pants belonging to the brothers and recovered from an abandoned home where they stayed, and hairs recovered from a cap recovered from a dumpster near where Ault's car was burned.

No blood or DNA was found on a knife police recovered at the Cedarville home.

Testimony continues at 8:30 a.m. Thursday.

NW News on 04/20/2016

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