HOT SPRINGS -- A Garland County Circuit Court jury listened to hours of grisly details Wednesday as the capital-murder trial of a man accused in a 2017 triple homicide entered its third day and prosecutors presented crime scene evidence.
Nicholas Matthew Lewondowski, 35, has been in custody since his arrest Dec. 6, 2017. He is charged with three counts of capital murder and faces life in prison if convicted on each count in the deaths of Paul D. Power, 40, Dory Ann Power, 46, and Brenda Sue Lawson, 60, all of Hot Springs. Their bodies were found in a residence at 208 Nevada St. in Hot Springs on the day before his arrest.
"It was a pretty gruesome scene," Lt. Shawn Roach told the jury of six men and six women.
James Coble, a friend of Lewondowski's, told police earlier that he suspected Lewondowski had killed some people at the residence because Lewondowski believed they had stolen from him, according to court records. Coble said Lewondowski had told him that "a dude pulled a gun on me and it went bad" and that "you never leave witnesses behind." He said Lewondowski tried to recruit him to help cover it up.
"I felt like someone needed to go take a look around," Roach said.
Upon arrival, Roach said, he noted that the lights were on in the house but no one answered his knock at the front door. He said there was a small fire "still smoldering" in the backyard "so it seemed like someone had been there recently."
Officers found a door to the back porch unlocked and entered. Officers rounded a corner and found a rear door to the kitchen "standing open," Roach said.
"There was blood smeared all over the floor in the kitchen," he said.
Officers made their way through the kitchen and discovered a rolled up comforter on the dining room floor with "a pair of tennis shoes sticking out" from under it.
"You could tell it was a body, and at that point it was a crime scene," Roach said.
Officers noted a spent bullet on the floor and what appeared to be blood on the carpet, Roach said. In a front bedroom, they found a rifle on the floor, more blood and a sheet hanging across a doorway leading to a hallway.
"There were two more bodies laying on top of each other in the hallway," Roach said.
Jurors were shown more than 100 photos of the crime scene and other aspects of the case during the day's testimony, most of them during questioning of Jennifer Berrera, the Police Department's certified crime scene technician. It was Berrera who photographed and processed the scene along with detectives.
Berrera said the bodies in the hallway were of a man and a woman, both lying facedown. She said she could see a bullet hole in the man's chest and a bullet hole in his left side near his ribs.
The body in the dining room was of a woman, wearing "a green Subway shirt." There was a bullet hole in the woman's right cheek. Berrera said she collected as evidence pieces of the carpet that had blood and what appeared to be footprints on them.
Under cross-examination by Mark Fraiser, Lewondowski's attorney, Berrera said the comforter the woman was wrapped in, a blanket near the other bodies, a towel the rifle was found in, and a black trash bag covering a victim's head were not collected as evidence and sent to the state Crime Laboratory.
When Fraiser asked if the items could have been tested for fingerprints, fibers, DNA and other evidence, Berrera acknowledged that it was possible but noted that it wasn't up to her to decide what items were collected and sent.
Evidence also was collected at Coble's residence at 186 Golf Links Road after he notified police about some items left there by Lewondowski.
Lt. Duane Tarbet said he and detective Scott Lampinen went to the residence Dec. 6 and Coble led them to a location on the back south end of the property where some items were wrapped in a "screen-type material" under a bush.
Tarbet said the items appeared to be a boot and some black clothing, which Lampinen collected. Coble then asked Tarbet to enter the house, where some additional items were collected, reportedly belonging to Lewondowski.
Tarbet said Coble opened a drawer and gave him a holster and a bandanna that Lewondowski was reportedly wearing the day before. He also presented some counterfeit $100 bills that had been hidden in some insulation in an air duct that Coble said Lewondowski had given him.
Lampinen testified that after he collected the items at the back of the property, he walked back to a patrol car and spotted a white trash bag near the side of the house that "seemed out of place," so he collected it, too.
He said the bag appeared to contain clothing, including a shoe with possible blood on it.
Public defender Tim Beckham, who is also representing Lewondowski, asked Lampinen if officers searched Coble's house for other evidence or collected only the items Coble provided. Lampinen said that other than the items in the white trash bag, officers took only the items Coble had shown them.
Questioned further by deputy prosecutor Casey Richmond, Lampinen said he had looked around the house some while inside "and didn't see anything relevant." He noted that police had obtained a consent-to-search form from Coble's mother earlier that morning.
The trial continues today.
State Desk on 04/25/2019