Cortez Oliver trial: Gregory Johnson testimony

Today we heard testimony from Lt. Gregory Johnson, Chief of Detective Bureau..

On the night of the crime, he was called at home at 2:40 AM, and was at the hospital within a half hour, while Detective Akland stayed at the crime scene. Johnson found Lowther immobilized on a backboard with a neck brace, in pain and having trouble breathing.. Detective Nicolio called from Giant Eagle; Johnson went there ca. 4 AM.  He allowed Darrell Duke to leave there, as he would be easy to pick up later, but impounded the car. He photographed it there. (It had temporary tags… Secret Blog Reporter says that temporary tags usually mean trouble.) He photographed Jodi’s purse at the office. He talked to Jodi, her 2^nd interview, still evasive.

At 6Am, Cortez came for his keys. Johnson told Akland to bring him back for a statement; their strategy was to keep him talking and laughing. He was wearing work boots and had a flippant attitude.  They told him he was under arrest…then he started pumping the police for information. He said he’d been listening to the police scanner in Kent, and mentioned that he had quite a few lady friends. They Mirandized him, and then over the next 90 minutes he began to discuss his involvement. He admitted that he had entered the house and taken the coins, had made eye contact with Lowther who then screamed. The detectives blamed Jonny for the beating, to keep Cortez from becoming defensive.

They played a tape of this interview. Cortez was wearing the same boots and clothes he had on at Tallmadge Rd.  He got confrontational, claiming that he was late for work and had to get to Solon, and needed the key to get into his stepsister Doreca’s home to get the rest of his clothes. He was asked about the grass on his boots; he claimed the radiator on his truck was leaky and he had to keep filling it. When asked what he did last night, and why he was at Giant Eagle, he said they were confused, and asked who Jodi was. He claimed he’d been kicking with DD at his downtown Kent party, then had slept at Philip Duke’s home on Blake St. “I’ll probably get fired, I’m late for work. Can I get my keys back please, Mr. Sheriff Man?’  The cop said, “I’ve got an old guy in the hospital with the living shit beat out of him. Jonny beat him up.” They told Cortez he was looking at a felony I, good for 20 years., and Cortez said, “I can’t have a Felony 1 ; I want to go to truck-driving school! Can you get into the Army with an F1?”

“I’ve got to arrest you.”

“Ah, come up, I got no residence, nobody to bail me out. This is hurtful, I got no lawyer. What black don’t smoke blunts? We don’t use pile or roll. I got to go to court July 7 on it. Can you guys pull something? Can I sign something? How much do you think my bail will be? Can I get PR bond?”

“I don’t f***ing think so!”

(End of tape…back to questioning Johnson)

Lowther had a security camera outside on the porch…BUT IT WASN’T TURNED ON.  Lowther had said at the hospital that Jodi looked familiar. [ There’s been a rumor in R-C comments that Lowther was one of Jodi’s pole-dance clients and had violated opsec in that context.-JAQ]

On Aug. 5, Johnson took DD for a ride. DD showed him the two routes  they took that night, and the embankment of Tallmadge where they got out. He showed where they had hid the box of coins; there was a trail of coins leading to it.  Det. Akland went back and got it. On Aug. 7, DD showed more…they took the canine unit out and found more coins as well as a gym bag that Lowther’s son said did not belong to his father.. Pictures were shown of the coins resting in a bed of periwinkle (one of Secret Blog Reporter’s favorite flowers)

There was only DDs own blood on his shirt, no fingerprints recovered, no trauma to hands. His book didn’t match the boot print on Lowther.. Jonny admitted that he might have stepped on Lowther while fleeing from the neighbor Cortez never said that Jonny hurt Lowther. Cortez was careful with information…first admitted spending the night with DD, then admitted being on the property but not in the house, then admitted being in the house but didn’t do anything.

Testimony: Kristy LaPerry RN, Robinson Memorial Hospital, emergency 7-3:30 shift.  First nurse at Lowther’s side, even before police. He said he felt as if he were drowning, that he’d been knocked down, sat on, and his head twisted. He came in ca. 3:10 and she didn’t leave until 5.

Next witness: Dr. John Gusz. (At this point Secret Blog Reporter had to leave.)

Report compiled by JAQ from notes taken by Secret Blog Reporter, who is taking the day off tomorrow. …at which point the prosecution is expected to rest. She tells me that The Well Doctor is also on the list of witnesses to be called…which may clarify a few things.

Little mayors with big ideas

Mayor Jack Warren declares state of emergency in King NC, over a little snow.

The peepuls is not impressed.

Cortez Oliver trial : Darrell Duke testimony

Court started today promptly at 1:00. Unfortunately I was 8 minutes late and wasn’t allowed in. Also I had the unfortunate notice that I had to print my name before I could go in. Up until today we were to sign in. I’ve been purposely scribbling a signature, than nobody could possibly read, in fear of the hoodlums I was sharing air with. I told the nice lady cop exactly that and she allowed me to write in on the next page. Well, I did so. But, the name I printed wasn’t mine. After all, I’ve already got my well cleaned once, don’t want to invite them back, for a second look around. I missed Jodi’s cross exam by the defense lawyer. It took about 50 minutes. The only thing I was able to find out is, she wasn’t made out to be that much of a lying scheming bitch. She did lie when first arrested. Her excuse was of course she was high, scared and not thinking very clearly. I can believe that.

The second witness of the day was a surprise only to me, I guess. It was the wonderful boyfriend of Jodi, DD, or legally known as Darrell Duke. I believe I heard him say Darrell Mote Duke, but I didn’t hear it well. He sat down and raised his shackled hand to swear in. Everybody else stood to do that. First question: Why are you testifying today? “I did something wrong and I got to get it off my heart”. He’s known Cortez about 12 years. He is the half brother of his cousin Jonny Duke. DD said he graduated from Ravenna high in 2006 and Maplewood Career Center where he took auto technician classes. He’s had a few jobs at Red Lobster and at temp jobs. Then started selling drugs about 2 years ago. Yes, he’s sold to Fetty, crack and marijuana, X. She even worked for him, selling crack. Yes, she’s been a stripper at one time. No, she isn’t his girlfriend or anything like that. They just hung together. He never knew Mr. Lowther.

Wednesday, July 1, 09, phone calls from Cortez started about noon about this big lick. Cortez offered a thousand dollars for him to be a lookout man. He turned it down because ’he don’t steal from people’ . Cortez upped his offer to two thousand dollars, still DD said no. But, he agreed to do the driving, for one or two thousand dollars, that wasn’t clear.

DD picked up Fetty about 5 or 6:00 to hang together. (Not 11 like Jodi testified. She was lying or mistaken.) Made a few deals, then went to his sister’s place on Henderson Street, to sell more. About 6:30, Cortez called him again told him to meet him at Jonny’s on Blake Street. DD and Fetty got there about 7:30 – 8:00. There was Cortez, he was driving his girlfriend’s car, a black Saturn and there sat Cortez’s other ride, his boss’ vehicle with Well Doctor written on it; DD thinks it was a red Blazer. DD was driving a Toyota Camry. Jonny and Cortez got in the back seat. Cortez had a blue and black back pack. They were both wearing all black. Under Cortez direction (orders), they drove to the party on Infirmary near Wall street to pick up Bobby. Bobby refused to join in because of ‘the white chick’. DD said Cortez had the plan, his boss told him about this big lick. Old man had hand guns and a safe. He lived alone, but with a neighbor near by, hence Cortez needed a look out guy. The safe will have $5,000 in it. Cortez gave directions to Lowther’s home. They got to Herring Creek and Tallmadge Road about 1:00 in the morning, and dropped off Jonny and Cortez. DD and Fetty drove around and smoked a little weed, and Jodi some more crack, till they got a call from Cortez to go back and pick them up again. (DD could not identify Mr. Lowther’s home on the aerial view diagram.) Cortez was disappointed the dude was home and awake and was aborting the operation. Then Jodi piped up and said that she could get them in the house. She just did it. She wasn’t under pressure and Cortez didn’t ask her to. Cortez said he would debow the dude if he had to. DD dropped all three of them off about the same place, Herring Creek and Tallmadge Road and waited, driving slowly up and down the road. First appeared Jodi at the side of the road; she was empty-handed and scared. Then Cortez jumped out of the bushes carrying a box and dropping coins. Jodi said that Cortez fucked up that dude pretty bad. Argument started about cut money. DD was pretty upset. They drove back up Lakewood Road awhile till Jonny called for them to come back and pick them up. They put the box of coins under some pine tree before heading back. (I didn’t understand when they went back to get it. I don’t think anybody did.) Cortez yelled at Jonny that he didn’t do anything to deserve cut. Jonny said, If he didn’t do anything then why did he have blood on his hands, and he showed them his hands. DD was still yelling about his cut. Lots of yelling. They drove back to DD’s parents home in (on) Black Horse, about 10 minute drive. DD got a Royal Crown bag from the house and Cortez put the coins in it. They went to Blake Street and dropped off Jonny. Then they went to Highland to sell more drugs before going to Giant Eagle to cash the coins in. Cortez told or asked Jodi to do it. Cortez said he was going to run because Jodi was taking so long. DD gave him his crack bags to take with him. Cortez ran toward Burger King with DD‘s bag of dope bags. Cops came up to car and arrested ONLY Jodi. They took DD’s car and dropped him off at hospital. DD went home. About 8:00 in the morning he got a call to come in to police station.

Yes, he lied that morning to the police because he wanted to save his own skin, but he told the truth during the 3 hour interview with detectives, July 8th. “Yeah, I’m a snitch. I snitched during that interview with the prosecutors too.”
Cortez wrote 4 letters to DD while in jail. The pod helpers delivered them. DD also wrote some back. State got the letters in a shake down of the cells about two weeks ago.
Jonny and DD shared a cell for 26 days after the arrest, but they didn’t talk about case because DD was angry about money cut.
Conclusion: “If Jodi didn’t jump at the chance to get involved it wouldn’t happened, is that right?” DD “Correct”

Harry Duke is another cousin, he was in jail at the same time. He might be out now, DD is not sure.
***************************
Thanks to Zamzar for the file translation

A couple comments:
Darrell’s minimization of his relationship with Jodi had to have hurt her, assuming she heard about it. There’s some disagreement about what exactly he said, but either way, “Friends with benefits” is the gist of it. Or “his crack ho” if you want to get nastier about it.

If I were “The Well Doctor”, I’d be looking for a job with somebody else right about now, preferably in another state. I can’t imagine anybody letting him on their property, especially after this last testimony. Unlike many commenters at the R-C, I doubt if Bruce Miller is indictable, though I’d like to see him take the stand. Rather than him casing Lowther’s place, as some would have it, I think he made some casual observations, and ran his mouth thoughtlessly. If so, he’s learned to shut up about other people’s business by now, and you have to feel sorry for him. And it increasingly looks to me as if Oliver was never in the house previously, and that his information was second-hand from Miller. It would seem that he overestimated both the size and the ease-of-access of the haul, and didn’t have a plan for getting it out with another house nearby. Of course, if criminals were any good at looking ahead, they wouldn’t be criminals. Given the paucity of the haul, one of them would have ratted out another, even if they hadn’t done anything to actually be caught.

Cortez update postponed, and other stuff

I was going to bring you a new update from my Special Co-blogger Reporter at the Cortez Oliver trial, but we ran into technical difficulties….Special Co-blogger Reporter isn’t paid enough to buy MS Word, she doesn’t want to write anything major on Yahoo Webmail where she might lose it, so it’s in Works or something and I can’t get it to open. She’s been asked to paste it and re-submit, but she’s at the trial now, so it won’t happen until this evening, unless I find away around it (I can get text out of it, but not in the proper order). Short form: da little boidies is singing.  The real newspaper report is here.

Meanwhile, my Prescott F alto recorder came yesterday. I only had time this AM to open and inspect and play 6 notes…it apparently didn’t freeze to death in transit. Two more to go, and I’ll be done buying recorders for now, maybe forever.

And last night at the Mac we had the super-secret recording of my new mass, finished 1/17. I can’t tell you a lot about it as it’s for a contest and it has to be anonymous. But I was quite pleased with both effort and result.

John Murtha moves to underground bunker; women, poor hardest hit

Assuming (possibly erroneously) that the Murthafucka was a Christian man, he is better off. As are we.

Register as a subversive in South Carolina

South Carolina, the state so culturally beknighted that Christianists chose it to be their Free State-antithesis, has recently passed a law, stating:

Every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States, of this State or of any political subdivision thereof by force or violence or other unlawful means, who resides, transacts any business or attempts to influence political action in this State, shall register with the Secretary of State on the forms and at the times prescribed by him.

Since none of us knows when our business might take us to SC, and since I would hope that most readers of this blog would like to “overthrow” the Federal government (preferably by simply ignoring it) and are good law-abiding citizens, perhaps we should all download and fill out the form and send it in with our $5, so that some unemployed burrowcrat can have work. After all, it’s not like actual subversives (e.g., Al Qaeda members) are going to register, and how will they know there are subversives if their paperwork is not in order?  They might accidentally arrest a non-registered subversive and pop them $25K/10 years in jail for not filling out a simple form.

Would they arrest you for claiming to be a subversive when you aren’t really a subversive? Of course not! They even say so:

SECTION 23-29-30 Effect on freedom of press or speech.

Nothing in this chapter shall be construed to authorize, require or establish censorship or to limit in any way or infringe upon freedom of the press or of speech as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States and no regulation shall be promulgated hereunder having that effect.

So, boys and girls, send in as many forms as you want. Send one in for each of your subversive pets. Better still, send one in the name of your least-favorite Congresscritter; after all, they’re the ones who are really destroying this country. But remember to include the $5; bureaucracy is expensive, you know.

Cortez Oliver trial: inadvertent humor

The R-C version of events is here. One part of Fetty’s testimony that didn’t make it into the paper (gee, I wonder why?):While she was on the phone, Lowther’s dog began to bark, and he said, “There must be a coon in the back yard,”

I am not making this up.

Whose dog is it?

A Rhode Island man has been charged with animal cruelty and unauthorized practice of veterinary medicine for removing a cyst from the leg of his own dog. He claims that he couldn’t afford a vet, but a vet operated later to remove an infection from the first surgery.

E.J. Finocchio, a veterinarian and president of the Rhode Island Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, calls the surgery a ”heinous crime.”

Yes, it was a heinous crime: breaking of your state-supplied monopoly. Here’s the problem, Pinocchio: Even if you accept a compelling state interest in licensing veterinarians (debatable, but I’m not going there tonight), it’s an interest in keeping the public safe from quacks. It is not an interest in stopping somebody who knows he’s a quack from treating his own property. To assert such a state right is to claim in effect that the state owns all the dogs. And if you own my stock, you can feed it, just like you feed all the voters you own.

We have the same nonsense on stilts knocking on the door in Ohio, thanks to HSUS. If one of their petitioners stops me, I will make their day very interesting, I really don’t have a personal problem with the practices they want to codify into law. as practices. I don’t eat veal because I don’t approve of how it’s raised (and because I find it pointlessly expensive), I have no opinion on farrowing crates (never having raised pigs) except that squashed piglet is also cruel, and while my own chickens run free, there’s an anti-cruelty case to be made in favor of cages (as opposed to being a chew toy for a Labrador retriever). But all that is beside the point: they aren’t their animals. It’s a point that many farmers didn’t get last election when they voted for a state animal welfare board that they thought they could control.

Ownership means that I can dispose of my property as I please. If I want to draw and quarter Fido between 4 Harleys, I can do that. I would be a double-dyed flaming asshole worthy of the opprobrium of the whole world were I to do so, but it would be my right. In the case of Mr. MacQuattie, it is clear that he meant no ill to his dog; quite the contrary. His skill was not equal to his intent, but that’s true of all kinds of animal owners. Maybe the cause of animal welfare would be forwarded by teaching more owners how to do simple procedures and to otherwise better care for their critters, but you won’t see vets involved in that. And if people ever bothered to find out where their food comes from. they could pay for more humane husbandry, which would increase demand for the same, bring prices down, and put the bad actors out of business. But no, it’s easier to step into the little sheltered table with the touchscreen and secretly (as if ashamed) hire some guns to inflict your will on others.

Cortez Oliver (Richard Lowther murder) trial, Day 2

I wish to announce that The Quick and the Dead has a new paid court reporter. Granted, she gets paid in loving, Indian cooking and the occasional bunch of flowers, so I can’t afford a j-school grad. But this gives me a chance to scoop the Ravenna Record-Courier and show that this blog too can be a (semi)-legitimate news source, as opposed to a reprinter of other news.

For those not from around here who just come for political snark, Richard Lowther was a nice old man whose head was twisted off during a home invasion/robbery of his coin collection. This is the first trial of the series. Yesterday’s news can be found here. I had a reporter there too, but I don’t feel like typing from memory what she told me.

**********

Jodi [Fetty] sang,

She didn’t know Cortez, Johnny or Mr. Lowther before that night.  She had been in a sexual relationship with Darrell for about 5-6 months.  He gave her X, pot and crack.  She never bought from him, but he was a major drug dealer.  Cortez was looking for a driver because he didn’t want to use his vehicle.  It was red and had blue lettering on it, ‘THE WELL DOCTOR’.  She did not know Mr. Lowther, had never been in his home.  Nobody did (in the group) but Cortez maybe.  It sounded to me like he did a job on his well and asked to use the john, and cased the place out.

Only she and Darrell were arrested that night at Giant Eagle.  They had stopped at Darrell’s grandmother’s home for a few minutes, then his aunt’s, then took Johnny home, after the visit with Mr. Lowther.  Darrell was driving, Cortez talked Jodi into taking the coins into the store.  The two men got worried because it was taking her so long in there.  Darrell gave Cortez his bag of dope and told him to run.  Jodi had to come back to vehicle for her ID, to cash in the recipe from the coin machine…. which charged her $16.00 for the transaction, btw.  She bought the mouthwash, and Darrell and her the cigarettes.   They were not arrested right away.  They almost got away!  They pulled into a parking spot down the road and the Ravenna cop, who was called there by the off duty B… cop, was following them and blocked them in before turning on his overheads.  The defense lawyer asked to rebut her testimony, with others’ statements.  He had to have the others’ statements submitted from disk into transcripts.  Therefore the delay till Monday 1:00.

Do as I say…

Michael Moore Seeks Million-Dollar Refundable Tax Credit (from Program He Trashed) to Cover Costs of His Anti-Capitalist Movie

I’d like to grease the wheels of industry with lard rendered from his still-breathing carcass.