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| Rambo Hooser, 20, standing left, confers with his attorney Craig Shannon during his trial on a deliberate homicide charge in the death of Seeley Lake Elementary School teacher Cliff Nelson, 49, on Sept. 30, 1996. Hooser, at right, is embraced by family and friends following a "not guilty" verdict on Friday, May 30, 1996. |
Defense raised questions,
sowed seeds of doubtby Gary Noland
Seeley Swan Pathfinder
May 22, 1997The First Week
Twenty-one witnesses were called in the first days of Rambo Hooser's murder trial last week and most were subjected to the methodical and relentless probing of defense attorney Craig Shannon, whose tactics appear to be raising the big question mark-who did it?
Hooser, 20, is one of two young men charged with deliberate homicide in the late-night murder last September of 49-year-old elementary teacher Cliff Nelson, but Shannon persitently raised the possibility that several other persons out that fateful night could just as readily have committed the crime, and that the police were short-sighted and premature in settling on his client as the perpetrator of an act that stunned this rural, mountain community.
Another young Seeley Lake man, Matt Livinston, 21, is charged with the same murder and will be tried later. Both men also are charged with criminal mischief in the shooting of two windows at the Seeley-Swan High School building moments before the Nelson murder.
In two days of testimony last Thursday and Friday before the Memorial Day weekend recess, Shannon followed through on his Wednesday opening statement promise, reported in The Missoulian, to raise "...questions that can't be dismissed."
And, to get that point across to the six-man, six-woman jury, Shannon, with every opportunity, carried a flip-chart from one side of the courtroom to a position in front of the jurors and wrote in large letters the names of other possible suspects and noted deficiencies he claims in the police investigation.
Despite several objections by Missoula County Attorney Robert L. Deschamps III and a few admonitions from District Court Judge Ed McLean, Shannon moved methodically around the courtroom, generally making his point, and tearing off post-it notes from stacks of documentation after each series of questions.
Shannon's strategy is made easier by Deschamps admission in opening statements that his case against Hooser is "100 percent circumstantial," though Judge McLean told jurors that in Montana circumstantial evidence is given the same weight as direct evidence.
Deschamps has said that a "process of elimination" led to the arrest of Hooser and Livingston, and since then Deschamps said a former jail inmate will testify that in an argument while he was in jail, Hooser admitted killing Nelson, but that it couldn't be proved. Shannon said the remark was never made.
Shannon suggested that the police's "process of elimination" was incomplete when he asked state crime lab forensic expert Debbie Hewitt if latent prints found on Nelson's vehicle were compared to half a dozen other young people at a party in the woods the night of Nelson's murder.
"No," she replied. Her response was the same when he asked her if she had compared any possible prints on a beer carton container, a Jim Beam liquor bottle, shotgun shells, and other items.
"That's correct," she replied when Shannon added that "no prints matched the suspect?"
Hewitt told Deschamps that no suitable prints were found on the liquor bottle and that no suitable latent prints were obtained from the door knob at Nelson's trailer home on Redwood Lane.
SHOTS AWAKEN NEIGHBORS
Last Thursday morning, neighbors of Nelson testified to the sound of gun shots or explosions in the early morning hours of Sept. 30 last year that awakened them and prompted one to call 911.
Troy Spence and Jeremy Stevenson were both awakened by shotgun blasts around 1:30 a.m. Spence said he noted the time, 1:37 a.m., on a digital clock next to his bed.
"I heard two shotgun blasts," Spence said. The blasts, in fairly rapid succession, caused Stevens to call Spence and the two decided to check things out. Stevens called 911 before leaving his house to pick up Spence on nearby Spruce Street where Spence was waiting outside.
The two drove up Spruce to Locust Lane, the high school road, west to Highway 83, past the Saloon and back up Redwood Lane, left on Fir (a dead-end), back to Redwood and returned to Stevenson's home on Spruce, without seeing anything unusual.
After returning home, he heard resident Deputy Scott Newell call for backup on the scanner, and he and Stevenson went over to talk to Newell and discovered that Nelson had been shot.
Spence had been out earlier, he said, and had stopped at the Saloon and had seen Livingston and Hooser there. He said Hooser was acting normal and Livingston was complaining about the price of drinks "...in a joking manner." Spence said he returned home around 1 a.m. and did not see Hooser's white cadillac outside the Saloon on the later drive-around.
Meanwhile next door neighbors of Nelson, Jim and Darlene Becker, were awakened by a "big blast."
Darlene Becker said it sounded like a propane heater exploding. "It shook the windows and front door of my trailer," she said.
The two went in different directions after getting up, Jim toward the front door and Darlene to the den window which looked out on Nelson's trailer. Neither saw anything. "It was dark, just like always," Darlene said.
Under cross examination by Shannon, Jim Becker said he was looking out the front facing Redwood Lane and the Mormon church across the street and that he did not see any vehicles or anyone running.
Darlene Becker estimated it might have taken her husband, who had just had a heart attack and was moving slowly, two or three minutes to reach the front door.
Randy Livingston, father of Matt Livingston, was asleep in his trailer home across a side street separating it from Nelson's trailer when he heard two loud noises about one-half second apart. He said he glanced at his clock and it was approximately 1:30 a.m.
He told Deschamps he stayed in bed and the next thing he heard was his door open and his son come in. It was fairly soon after the shots, he said. He heard his son talking on the phone and got up for a glass of water.
"He (Matt) was drunk," Livingston said, adding that he could tell from his slurred talk.
Livingston said his son didn't own a shotgun and that if he was hunting, he used his father's shotgun, which was in his father's bedroom that evening.
Livingston said a friend called later to tell him about the shooting and he looked out his window and saw police. His son was asleep at that time, he said.
Livingston said it was not unusual for his son to walk home from the Saloon two blocks away.
Statements by Matt Livingston and Hooser say Hooser drove home alone and that Matt walked home after leaving the Saloon around 1 a.m. that night, but Deschamps says a witness will testify they both left in Hooser's white cadillac.
UNKNOWN VEHICLE
Wayne Soss, owner of a home and chain saw shop at the corner of Locust Lane and Spruce, testified late Thursday morning that the night of the murder he saw a "tan or brown" 1970 or early 1980 pickup on Spruce street that "...didn't look right."
Soss, who at that time was getting up around 1:30 a.m. to pick up newspapers at the Clearwater Junction and deliver to Kalispell, saw the vehicle parked in the middle of Spruce, facing north, with only parking lights on. It looked like someone was in it, he said, but he was not sure.
"It was between my place and the house next door," Soss said.
Soss suspected the occupants might be after a new snowmobile trailer he'd just bought, so after turning south on Highway 83, he looped back through the Chicken Coop restaurant's parking lot to check.
The vehicle had left, though he thinks he remembers tail lights that could have been going north on Spruce or west on Locust. He wasn't sure.
He described the vehicle as a full size pickup, a Chevy, two-wheel drive and low to the ground.
Soss said there could have been two girls in it in response to a question by Shannon, and that he has not seen the truck again or if he has, he didn't recognize it. He was shown a photo by Shannon and replied the photo was "similar" and could possibly be it. The photo was not entered as evidence.
No. 2 FEDERAL SHELLS
From evidence gathered Nelson's home, police have determined that Nelson was killed by a shotgun blast to the head as he was moving from his bedroom toward his living room door. The weapon was a 12-guage shotgun firing No. 2 Federal shot, police say.
When they arrested Hooser, police found similar shells and Hooser's shotgun, but no distinctive tracings are left by shotguns and the shells have not been traced back to Hooser's gun.
Dan Cainan, owner of Dan's Discount in Seeley Lake, said he is the only retailer in town that sells that brand of shotgun shells. He knew Hooser. "He's been in my store," Cainan said, adding the last time was last year during duck hunting season, buying shells.
Cainan said he probably had two or three boxes of Federals in stock, but he couldn't remember who he had sold them to. He identified a box shown him by Deschamps as coming from his store. "The $14.98 price tag is one of mine," Cainan said, explaining that he takes one big price tag and cuts it into four smaller, usable tags.
Though Cainan may be the only source in Seeley Lake for Federal shells, Shannon asked him how many competitors he had in Montana? "Lot of 'em," Cainan replied.
SHOTS AT HIGH SCHOOL
A good part of Thursday afternoon's testimony last week focused on Andrew Gideon, a Seeley-Swan High School English and math teacher who lives in a trailer home near the back of the school.
Gideon testified he was awakened by two, rapid gun shots at 1:30 a.m. as indicated on a clock next to his bed, though he later said he kept his clock four minutes fast. His first thought, he said, was that someone was shooing deer, but then he heard a loud vehicle leaving toward town. When he looked, he could hear the vehicle going over the bridge near the school, but he did not see it. The vehicle sounded like a loud muffler that you could hear when someone stepped on the gas, Gideon said.
After that, Gideon said he went pack to sleep, got up at 6:30 a.m., went to get the morning paper near the front of the school, saw Kim Haines, principal, coming to school and the two of them noticed the shot-out windows to the principal's office.
Sharp exchanges, sometimes prompting snickers in the courtroom, characterized Shannon's cross examination of Gideon, with hostility apparent between the two.
In a later "test," on October 29, Gideon listened to Hooser's white cadillac as it approached the school, and told police it sounded "similar" to the vehicle that night.
"Do you have a background in automotive mechanics," Shannon asked.
"No, I have good ears," Gideon responded quickly.
"Do you have a tendency to overthink?" Shannon asked.
"No, I love to think," Gideon replied sharply.
Shannon said Gideon was prone to "fact & fantasy" in a journal he kept, that he sat on the steps of the Fundamental Baptist Church five or six days after the incident, listening for a similar sound he had heard that night, and that there was a high degree of "suggestibility" in the "test" when he stood outside the school listening to Hooser's cadillac when Hooser's father, Tip, drove up to get his son's school records.
Haines testified that "test" was set up after Hooser's father had asked for his son's records one day and was told to return the next day as the records were not ready.
Shannon questioned Haines about the reliability of the "test."
"Did you ask him (Gideon) to identify from more than one vehicle," Shannon asked, suggesting the test was like a line-up with only one person, and criticizing Haines' role in the test.
"All they asked was for Mr. Gideon to listen to the white cadillac. Period. We were just cooperating with the Sheriff's office," Haines replied firmly.
Haines also testified that Rambo Hooser, who never graduated, was "frustrated" with the school system by the time he reached high school, that Haines had Rambo's father in his office several times to discuss Rambo's "tardies, absences, disrespect and insubordination to teachers," that Rambo was sometimes angry, but accepted his punishments.
In final testimony last Thursday, Deputy Sheriff Scott Newell took the stand and described his response to a 911 call of "shots heard" that night.
His wife, Mary, also testified she had heard shots that night shortly after they had gone to bed and that the 911 call came a few minutes later, at 1:37 a.m.
Deputy Newell said he was downtown in the Saloon parking lot about 10 minutes later talking to people there who had not heard anything. He drove east on Redwood Lane, noticed Nelson's front door ajar about three inches and later returned to check it out.
With his flashlight shining through the door, Newell saw Nelson lying on the floor on the far side of the living room. He saw blood on the far wall and noted that Nelson was not breathing.
Fearing someone might still be in the trailer, Newell radioed for backup.
SECOND DAY OF TESTIMONY
Last Friday, the fourth day of the trial but only the second day of testimony, the prosecution called several young people who were at a party in the woods on October 29, the night of Nelson's murder.
Heather Hult, then living in Potomac but now residing in Seeley Lake, said the party was held on the "4 x 4 Trail," about a mile from her boyfriend's home on Riverview Drive on the road to the Double Arrow Lookout.
She said the boys had been duck hunting that day and the group went to the party site between 10 or 10:30 p.m., where they were drinking two bottles of Jim Beam whiskey that Jon Williams had bought. She thought Matt Livingston brought some beer later on, but she said there were no drugs being used at the party.
When asked by Deschamps if there was anything "unusal" happening at the party, she responded: "No, everyone was in a happy, cheerful, laid-back mood."
The party broke up around midnight, she said, and she and Tripp Mincey, her boyfriend, went back to his house and to bed around 12:30 a.m. and never left the house after that.
Police have contended Hooser held a "grudge" against Nelson from problems in Nelson's class in elementary school and Shannon concentrated on this in is examination of Hult.
"This jury wants to know if there's any grudge Rambo's nursed against anyone," Shannon asked.
"I never heard him say anything against anyone," Hult replied, adding, in response to questions from Shannon that Hooser was "always calm," and did not act strange, run or leave the state after Nelson's murder.
Again, in response to Shannon's questions, Hult added that Jon Williams, a part of the group of kids, had acted strangely at a West Side Bypass party in late October by waving a .22-caliber pistol around and pointing it at people and saying "boom."
She said Williams had a "fascination for guns," that if a gun was in sight it had to be in his hands, and that she "...never felt comfortable around him."
Chris Paxton was another young man questioned by police as to his whereabouts the night of the murder.
Paxton, now employed in a packing plant in North Dakota, testified he was at his sister's home that evening until 7 or 8 p.m. and went to bed between 10:30 and 11 p.m., and didn't leave his parent's home, north of Seeley Lake, the rest of the night except to check outside when he heard some strange noises.
He admitted being friends of Rambo and Livingston and admitted to difficulties in school where he had made a threat to a teacher who pressed charges, though he said he "meant no harm."
He said he had made Nelson's Red List (disciplinary sheet), that he might possibly have said something threatening about Nelson, but that Nelson was a "real nice guy" who helped him get a band going.
Margery Kittrell, Paxton's sister, who lived nearby, said her brother called her between 1 a.m. and 1:30 a.m. and asked her to look outside because he had heard strange noises.
Under cross examination, Shannon produced a screen from a door at the Paxton home, an antique nail and a pocketknife. Paxton had said he locked himself out of the home that night investigating noises and that he had torn the screen to get back in.
Shannon labored on the fact that Paxton had told police he used the nail to tear the screen, but had told Shannon he used his pocketknife.
Responding to Shannon's questions, Paxton said he had known Rambo for eight years as a friend.
Paxton's father testified he and his wife were in Nevada the night in question and that he noticed the torn screen when they returned.
Kitrell said she had known Rambo for eight years and did not know of any grudge he had against Nelson.
Both Deschamps and Shannon spent much of Friday afternoon questioning Jonathan (Jon) Williams and Jeff Kimmell who had gone to the party together. Both said they had been duck hunting that day and that exchaning shells between friends was common and that they all good have borrowed shells. Kimmell also admitted stealing a box of shells from Dan's Discount
Williams said he was using a double-barrel shotgun borrowed from a friend and Kimmell said he used a 12-guage.
Williams was living with his father on Riverview Drive and Kimmell was living at the Tamaracks Resort, owned by his mother. Both said they went to William's place with two girls, Trish and Dana, when the party broke up.
Williams said he had bought the two bottles of Jim Beam for the party and that he was high on crank (speed), and had little sleep in the past day. They returned to town once to pick up Matt Livingston.
Both said they were at William's place around 1 a.m. and sent the girls to the Saloon to get some drinks. Williams said the girls returned with the drinks and $50 cash from a small drug sale he had arranged.
About 1 a.m., Williams said he was passing out, coming down hard from a mixture of the speed and a bowl of marijuana the couples had smoked. Kimmell said he drove home in his white Camero.
Williams said his father returned from a trip around 4 a.m., that he gathered up his drug paraphernalia and went outside to sleep in a school bus. Police later talked to his father, but not to him that night.
He also admitted having a "fascination" for guns and owning a sawed-off shotgun that he purchased from Rambo Hooser a couple weeks before duck hunting season. He later said he had a friend "hide" the gun in the woods because he was afraid of a possible firearms charge if he was caught with it.
Williams, who said he was "partying every day," admitted it was quite possible he may have made threatening remarks about killing someone and pointing a pistol at people and dogs, but that he couldn't remember or recall doing it.
Kimmell said he had had difficulty in Nelson's class in elementary school, but that he had "...some respect for him. He helped me graduate (from high school).
Both answered in the negative, as had earlier witnesses, when Shannon asked them if they knew who killed Cliff Nelson or who shot out the high school windows.
Robert Blackwell, 26, now living in Las Vegas, Nev., but an off-duty bartendar at the Saloon the night of the murder, testified he declined to give Matt Livingston a drink that night when Livingston had no money. Rambo Hooser was with Livingston, but under-age to drink.
When the two left the Saloon, Blackwell went to the window to look out, thinking they might be mad at him. He said he saw taillights of a car leaving the Saloon but couldn't see anyone was in the car.
Last Friday's testimony ended in an unusual way, with a deposition of a truck driver being read by Captain Jerry Crego, while Deschamps and Shannon read their parts. The deposition had been taken by them earlier.
Judge McLean told jurors to consider the testimony as though the truck driver, Christopher Lee Miller, of Judith Gap, was present.
Miller said he was delivering a load of logs to Pyramid the night of the murder and arrived in Seeley Lake around 10 p.m. He pulled in at the 1-Stop parking lot, parking close to the sign along the highway, to spend the night.
He was sleeping across the seats of his cab when he thought that around 1 a.m. he was awaked by two gun shots that echoed through the trees.
"Something ran by my truck," he said, adding the noise sounded like footsounds and he thought it was a spooked animal. He first said he not sure how long this was after the gunshots, but later said it was no more than a minute. He didn't look up, he said, because he was "a little scared."
Some time after that, probably much later because he was about to fall back asleep, he said he heard a vehicle pull into the 1-Stop. He glanced up and described it as a "white color" or tan Blazer or Bronco, and he was sure it wasn't a cadillac. He said it drove at a normal rate of speed in a loop around the back of the 1-Stop and left on the highway going north, but he didn't see anyone.
Testimony - Second Week Testimony - First Week Jury Acquits Hooser