Murder Trial Underway

July 28, 2005 By PAUL ROY & BEN GARRETT
Independent Herald Staff

HUNTSVILLE — Closing arguments in the murder trial of Charles Ray Harvey, who is accused of the July 2003 shooting death of his daughter’s husband, Armando Loredo, were expected to have been presented to the jury around noon yesterday (Wednesday).

Harvey, age 49, of Robbins, is charged with first degree murder and conspiracy to commit first degree murder. His daughter, Vanessa Loredo, is also charged with murder. After several delays over the past 15 months, Harvey’s trial began with jury selection Monday morning.

After a day and a half of testimony, the state rested its case with what could prove to be a bombshell development after Criminal Court Judge E. Shayne Sexton reversed an earlier decision not to permit two pieces of evidence — letters from Harvey to his sisters while Harvey was housed at the Tennessee Department of Corrections’ River Bend facility in Nashville.

In chambers on Monday afternoon, Judge Sexton had denied a motion by the state to allow the letters to be entered into evidence, but warned at the time that he might allow the letters later, depending upon how the trial progressed.

After court proceedings resumed following a lunch break Tuesday afternoon, Deputy District Attorney John Galloway, who along with Sarah Davis is handling the prosecution of the case, renewed the state’s request to permit the letters to be entered into evidence. In reversing his decision, Judge Sexton said that he might have “jumped the gun” earlier, saying that he had looked at the matter “through a prism, and now I see it through a different light.”

In the letters, which Harvey allegedly penned to his sisters, ReShonda Crabtree and Linda Overton, he sought $8,000 from each of his sisters to hire a “hit man” to “take care of” his daughter and Donna Gail LaBoy. LaBoy was Harvey’s live-in girlfriend at the time of Loredo’s death. She has also been indicted in connection with the case and is the prosecution’s star witness.

The other major development in Tuesday’s proceedings was the testimony of LaBoy, who spent approximately two hours and 20 minutes on the stand Tuesday morning.

After 90 minutes of direct examination by Galloway, defense attorney Edward Holt attacked LaBoy’s credibility, pointing out several discrepancies between LaBoy’s testimony on Tuesday and the testimony she gave at a 2003 preliminary hearing for Harvey and Vanessa Loredo. Specifically, Holt said that LaBoy had testified in 2003 that she did not realize that Harvey’s Beretta 9mm handgun — the gun the state contends is the weapon used to kill Loredo — was missing until after she transported Harvey, his daughter and her husband to New River on July 8, 2003. Tuesday, LaBoy testified that she had watched Harvey strap a shoulder holster containing the 9mm to his body before leaving for the camping trip.

Holt also questioned LaBoy’s memory and her medication for anxiety, which he said can cause memory problems. Through his cross-examination, he attempted to point out that LaBoy “might have been over-medicated” on the evening of July 8.

Holt also stated that LaBoy has been indicted by the Scott County Grand Jury on charges of facilitation of first degree murder and accessory after the fact. He accused her of fabricating parts of her testimony in hopes of seeing her charges lessened or dismissed by the state.

In response, Galloway questioned LaBoy about various parts of her original statement to investigators on July 23, 2003 — a statement that Galloway said corroborates her testimony on Tuesday and was given four months before she was charged by the grand jury in November 2003.

After the state rested its case at 2:02 p.m. Tuesday, the defense began its case by calling two witnesses before attorney John Mitchell said that the defense’s case was “done for the day, due to circumstances” beyond his control.” Those circumstances apparently involved Vanessa Loredo, who has been subpoenaed by the defense to testify. It remained unclear as court was recessed Tuesday afternoon whether Loredo would testify.

The defense was to resume its case at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday morning. The trial was expected to be completed by day’s end.

Proceedings in the case began at 9 a.m. Monday morning with jury selection. After two and a half hours of interviews with prospective jurors, a jury of 14 — 11 women and three men — was seated at approximately 11:30 a.m. as the trial got underway Monday morning. None of the 14 jurors were designated as alternates; Judge Sexton explained that all 14 would be seated in the jury box and that at the end of the presentation of evidence, two jurors’ names would be drawn and that the remaining 12 would retire for deliberations.

Davis delivered the prosecution’s opening statement shortly after the jury was seated Monday morning, saying that the case against Harvey and his daughter, who is being tried separately on murder charges, began with a phone call on Father’s Day 2003 and ended five weeks later with the murder of Loredo’s husband.

That phone call, Davis said, renewed the relationship of the father and daughter after being separated for some time, and resulted in her traveling from Indiana to his home in Scott County.

Davis indicated that Harvey and his daughter led the victim to believe that he would soon be working for Harvey, all the while planning the July 8, 2003, camping and fishing trip to New River, a trip from which Armando Loredo would not return.

Davis went on to describe the events of the evening of July 8 and the following days, mostly from the testimony given to authorities by LaBoy.

LaBoy, Davis said, would testify later in the trial that she had driven Harvey, his daughter and his daughter’s husband to New River on the evening of July 8 and had returned at 9:30 a.m. the following morning to pick up Harvey and Vanessa Loredo. Davis added that LaBoy would describe Harvey’s conversation with her about how Loredo was shot and said that LaBoy would testify that Harvey and Vanessa Loredo were at one point sitting at the kitchen table saying, “I did it!” and the other saying, “No, I did it!” back and forth.

Davis said that the two gathered up Armando Loredo’s clothing and other personal items, burned them and hauled the ashes to the dump by Scott High School, and that they drove to Mount Vernon, Illinois, to dispose of Loredo’s car, which they burned on an isolated roadside.

After returning home, Davis said, Harvey was worried about the body, which the state maintains that he and his daughter weighted down before placing into the river, and returned to the scene with a chain and a cinder block to further weight the body down. A couple of days later, she said, Harvey went to the river again, and added a large rock to the weight holding it down. Four days later, she added, he planned another trip to the site where the body was dumped but had to cancel when he heard on the police scanner that the body had been found.

In summation, Davis reminded jurors of the “I did it!” - “No I did it!” exchange on that day in 2003 by saying they were both right . . . “They both did it!”

After the defense team, which consists of attorneys John Mitchell, Edward Holt and Darwin Colsten, decided without objection from the state to delay its opening statement until their case begins, the prosecution began its case on Monday by calling a total of six witnesses: Two Scott County Sheriff’s Department investigators, a former jailer, and three Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agents.

The state’s first witness, TBI Special Agent Steve Vinsant, described the process of identifying Harvey as the chief suspect in the crime.

By July 23, five days after the body was discovered and just over two weeks after the crime allegedly occurred, the victim had been identified as Armando Loredo, Vinsant testified. He said that investigators had learned by that point that Loredo had a wife, “so we wanted to find her.” He added that she was found in the company of Harvey and LaBoy at the Carriage Trace apartment complex in Clinton. All three were taken into custody, Vinsant testified, and were transported to the Campbell County Sheriff’s Department in Jacksboro for questioning.

After an initial interview with Harvey — who said he knew nothing of the killing, according to Vinsant — he testified that he interviewed LaBoy and Loredo. During those interviews, he said, LaBoy said that Harvey had confessed to her that he had killed Armando Loredo, and Vanessa Loredo admitted to him that she had been present when her husband was shot. He then interviewed Harvey a second time, he said.

After informing Harvey of the statements of his girlfriend and daughter, he said that Harvey tried to pin Loredo’s death on his daughter. “He said that she (Vanessa) shot Mr. Loredo while he was squatting down using the bathroom,” Vinsant testified.

Kenneth Robbins, a former jailor employed with the Scott County Sheriff’s Department, testified for the prosecution that he was leading Harvey back to his cell following a visitation period at the jail on July 30 when Harvey admitted to him that he had shot Loredo.

“He asked me if I had any idea what they’d do if they convicted him of first degree murder,” Robbins testified. “I told him I didn’t have any idea.” He said that Harvey then asked him about the law pertaining to matters of self defense, to which Robbins again said he did not know. Harvey then said, “I’ll just tell you what happened,” Robbins said.

He went on to say that Harvey had described to him a scene in which Armando Loredo and Vanessa Loredo were fighting. As Harvey pulled Armando Loredo off his daughter, according to Robbins’ testimony, he said that Loredo had a knife. Harvey then told Robbins that he “spun him around and popped him,” Robbins testified.

During a lengthy testimony, Scott County Sheriff’s Department Chief Detective Robby Carson testified about what happened at a hole of water on New River, approximately one mile above the New River Bridge at U.S. Hwy. 27 on the evening of July 23, 2003.

Carson was originally contacted by a fisherman, he said, who claimed that he and another fisherman had found what they thought to be a body. Carson said that himself and Detective Wade Chambers accompanied the two men back to the area, where they noticed an object submerged in approximately one foot of water. He said that they “tried to move it with a paddle, but couldn’t.”

After returning to the scene with Detective Randy Lewallen and Deputy Karen Edwards, Carson said that investigators were able to determine that the submerged object was, in fact, a body, and that they realized they were dealing with a homicide after determining that the body was weighted down.

Detective Lewallen would later testify for the state that after investigators attempted to move the body “but couldn’t make any headway,” that he “followed his (Loredo’s) arms down into the water” and discovered strings tied to the body.

Carson testified that after 90 minutes, the team of law enforcement officers were finally able to get the body into the boat. He said what the fishermen had originally saw in the water was the midsection of Loredo’s body. The head and legs of the body, he said, had been weighted down.

During Lewallen’s testimony, the detective pushed a wheelbarrow of rocks and cinderblocks into the courtroom at the request of Deputy D.A. Galloway. The barrel, introduced as one of the state’s 43 pieces of evidence during the first day of testimony, contained a total of five rocks and four cinderblocks, all of which - according to testimony - were attached to the body when it was pulled from the river.

Carson testified that after the body had been removed from the river, it was floated to the bridge at U.S. Hwy. 27 with the assistance of Scott County Rescue Squad personnel. At that point, the body was transported to the Scott County EMS headquarters behind Scott County Hospital, where it was prepared for transport to the University of Tennessee Medical Center for autopsy procedures.

Carson testified that, during a later search of Harvey’s Simms Road, Robbins, residence, he and Chambers found several pieces of rope similar to the rope used to attach the weights to Loredo’s body, as well as a boat and paint that was the same color as paint found on one of the cinderblocks attached to Loredo’s body.

The chief detective added that three days later, on July 26, 2003, LaBoy approached him with information about where the alleged murder was located. According to Carson’s testimony, LaBoy told him that she had overheard Harvey say that the weapon was buried near a well house in the back yard of the Simms Road residence. Carson said that he and Chambers obtained consent from LaBoy to search the premises again and that Chambers found a section of sod in the back yard that “lifted up - roots and all.”

An ammunition box was buried in that spot, he said, containing a Beretta 9mm handgun, a nylon shoulder holster, and several magazines and rounds of ammunition.

TBI Special Agent David Hoover, a forensic scientist specializing in fingerprints at the TBI’s Nashville Crime Lab, testified that he had obtained one identifiable print from the ammo box, and said that he had matched it with Harvey’s left thumb print. Hoover said that he had originally been supplied with the prints of Vanessa Loredo and a William Hoogan, and that he had requested the prints of Harvey.

In cross-examination by Mitchell, Hoover testified that he had obtained several partials from the box in addition to the print identified as Harvey’s.

No identifiable prints were found on the handgun, the holster, or any of the box’s contents, he said.

Meanwhile, Detective Carson also testified that LaBoy had approached him on a separate occasion with a key that she had located. The key, Carson said, fit a lock that was on a chain investigators found around Loredo’s neck when they recovered his body from the river.

During testimony by Lewallen, Galloway had the detective to demonstrate that the key fit the lock.

TBI Agent Kelvin Woodby, a DNA analyst at the bureau’s Knoxville Crime Lab, testified that he had conducted a DNA analyses of the boat found at Harvey’s residence. He said that while no DNA match could be made - dirt in the boat had interfered with the process used in the analyses, he testified - he did identify three spots of blood that chemical testing proved to be human blood. The spots, located in the rear of the boat, were about the size of the end of a cue tip, he said.

Following Lewallen’s testimony at 4 p.m. Monday afternoon, Judge Sexton recessed the proceedings until Tuesday morning, citing the extraordinarily warm conditions in the courtroom, due to a faulty air conditioner and temperatures outside that had soared to near 100 degrees.

For the remainder of this story, see this week's edition of the Independent Herald

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