Rainbow Murder trial updates

by Pamela Pritt
     The man acquitted Wednesday of the Rainbow Murders had nothing but praise for his defense team and gratitude to the Braxton County jury that found him not guilty.
     Jacob Beard, who was arrested in 1992 for the murders of Nancy Santomero, 19, of Huntington, Long Island, New York, and Vicki Durian, 26, of Wellman, Iowa, said he was "forever indebted" to Stephen Farmer, Miles Morgan and public defender George Castelle for the defense he was provided during his 11-day trial in Sutton and throughout the last eight years. Castelle has been a volunteer on the case for the past several months, Beard said.
     Beard, 54, said he was "optimistic about this jury from the beginning" and wanted to thank them for digesting the evidence. The jury deliberated for two-and-one-half hours.
     Two members of that jury said Thursday a lack of evidence from the prosecution sealed their decision. "We looked at all the points of contention," one jury member elaborated. "We went on the basis of the evidence. We felt the defense was correct and certain things were not convincing enough from the prosecution to merit a guilty verdict."
     A Greenbrier County jury convicted Beard of the murders in 1993 and recommended he receive no mercy, meaning he would have spent life in prison with no possibility of parole. Senior Status Judge Charles Lobban set aside the 1993 jury’s verdict last year based on the deposition of convicted serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin and the affidavit of one of Beard’s former co-defendants who discredited a key prosecution witness.
     Franklin said he killed the women because one of them said she dated blacks and the other said she would have no problem doing so. Beard has maintained his innocence in the murders since he was arrested in 1992. "I don’t know that this will prove it to everyone," Beard said. "People who know me know I didn’t do this. My conscience is clear."
     A few prosecution witnesses testified they withheld information from investigators because they had been threatened or felt threatened by Beard.
     "There’s not one witness the prosecution put up that has anything to fear from me," Beard said.
     The former Hillsboro man said he will stay in the Lewisburg area with his wife Linda for the next few weeks and return to farming, a former occupation. Beard said he will begin working for Charlie Long and Bill Irons. Long and Irons were two of three men who posted Beard’s $100,000 bond in 1992.
     Beard said he will return to Florida for a time, but has not ruled out the Lewisburg area as a permanent home because his wife Linda has employment near there; however, Beard’s two daughters reside in Florida and he said he didn’t know if he wanted to live so far from them. He will return to Florida later this month to tie up loose ends there, he said.
     "We have a lot of talking to do in the next few weeks," he commented. "I’m glad it’s over."
     Over for Beard, but not for two families still grieving after 20 years and still looking for answers about the brutal murders of their daughters and sisters.
     Kathy Santomero-Meehan said Thursday she was still numb after hearing the jury’s decision. "I wish the evidence was strong enough the jury didn’t have any doubt," Santomero-Meehan said. "I hope the future brings us more enlightenment. Somebody killed her and it seemed like Beard was the one."
     Santomero-Meehan said she hoped someone would still come forward with answers about the murder of her sister, Nancy.
     She said her father was disappointed at the verdict.
     Vicki Durian’s sister, Mary Kauffman, said she was in shock when she heard the jury’s verdict shortly after it was rendered.
     Kauffman said from the evidence she had seen and heard over the years she felt the prosecution had the right man. "I feel a guilty man is now walking free," she said.
     However, she said she appreciated the people who had worked so hard and so diligently on this case for the last 20 years and "to the people who had the courage to testify on Vicki and Nancy’s behalf."
     "Your efforts will not be forgotten," Kauffman said.
     "My hope is that we, the family, will now be able to remember Vicki for the loving, caring person she was and all the fun we shared with her in her 26 years of life. Now maybe we will not have to be constantly reminded of the fear and terror Vicki and Nancy must have felt in their last hours on earth," she said.
     Kauffman said she had faith that God knows "exactly who was involved in this crime and the part they played."
     "God’s judgment and punishment for this act will be more severe than any punishment the courts could have," she said.
     Santomero-Meehan and her mother traveled to Sutton for the first part of this trial. Kauffman attended a portion of Beard’s 1993 trial, but was not able to come to West Virginia this year.
     Both Santomero-Meehan and Kaufmann said their families had discussed filing a civil suit, but had not decided to do so yet.

by Pamela Pritt
     Jacob Beard is a free man this morning.
     After a Braxton County jury deliberated two-and-one-half hours Wednesday, they found Beard not guilty of the murders of Nancy Santomero, 19, of Huntington, Long Island, New York, and Vicki Durian, 26, of Wellman, Iowa.
     The jury heard eight days of testimony in the case that began on a summer evening in 1980 when the bodies of Santomero and Durian were found shot to death at close range on Briery Knob, remote section in southern Pocahontas County.
     "Truth wins in the end," Beard commented after the verdict. Beard said he would spend a few days relaxing and then celebrate with his daughters.
     Beard cannot again be charged with the crimes he was indicted for in 1993 and convicted of that same year by a Greenbrier County jury. That jury recommended no mercy meaning Beard would never be eligible for parole; however, six and one-half years into his sentence, Senior Status Judge Charles Lobban set aside the jury’s verdict and granted Beard a new trial based on the deposition of convicted serial killer and the affidavit of Beard’s former co-defendant Arnold Cutlip who said he was with prosecution witness Johnnie Lewis on the day the women were murdered and they saw neither Beard nor the women.
     Beard’s defense team was tearful, and at the same time jubilant. Public defender George Castelle openly shedding tears while others hugged Beard and his wife, Linda.
     Lead defense attorney Stephen Farmer, who represented Beard in his first trial, was happy with the verdict. "It’s a great day," Farmer said. "The system took a long time to work. It’s been eight years and now he gets to go home and live with his wife."
     Beard was arrested for the murders in 1992.
     Farmer said he had no doubts about the outcome of the case, particularly since Beard himself believed so strongly in his innocence. "Mr. Beard was so patient and so believing in the system," Farmer commented. "His belief and confidence in the system never wavered so mine couldn’t either."
     "They poured their hearts into it," Beard said of his defense team, which included Miles Morgan, who works in Farmer’s law firm.
     The prosecution team left the court room quickly after the jury was released. Later, lead investigator Robert Alkire, who has worked on the case since the evening of the murders, said he was disappointed, but accepting of the jury’s verdict.
     "The system we have is the best system in the world," Alkire said. "You’ve got to accept what the jury says. There’s still one more judge Mr. Beard has to go through."
     Although the outcome is not what Alkire said he expected, he was relieved that the case was finally over.
     During closing arguments, Farmer pointed to Alkire as one of the 87 reasons Beard was innocent of the crimes.
     Farmer alleged that Alkire had orchestrated the case against Beard and coerced several witnesses into changing their stories to incriminate his client.
     The defense attorney listed several prosecution witnesses who had changed their stories after spending time with Alkire, including Santomero and Durian’s traveling companion Elizabeth Johndrow, who first said she left the women at 1 p.m. on June 25, 1980, the day of the murders, and then changed her testimony in 1993, saying she believed she parted from them at Richmond, Virginia, on June 24.
     "If Jacob Beard goes to jail in this case then none of us are free. Our families aren’t free, our children aren’t free. We’ll all have to be scared that 20 years from now somebody is going to make up a story about us," the attorney argued. The prosecution’s case is like a puff of smoke, Farmer said, "every time you get hold of it, it slips through your fingers."
     Farmer said Beard’s inability to recall exactly where he was on the afternoon of June 25, 1980, was not a reason to find him guilty. "He’s been brutally honest about the fact he can’t remember where he stopped," the attorney said. "If he wanted to he could have made up a story. The reason you should believe him is because he wouldn’t do that."
     Beard, Farmer told the jury, was just a man who worked hard as a mechanic and was taking care of a family, while the state would "have you believe Mr. Beard for no reason at all and totally out of character, shot these women."
     Farmer asked the jury to recall the confession of Joseph Paul Franklin, who "had the resume to do what he did. He traveled around the country doing it over and over," Farmer said.
     The defense attorney noted that Franklin had confessed to the murders in 1984 and drew a map that detailed the area where the murders were committed.
     Farmer touched on the defense’s other theory of the case, that Santomero and Durian were killed by Beard’s former co-defendant, Gerald Brown and his companion Bobby Lee Morrison, more during closing arguments than he had throughout the defense case. Several people who testified for the prosecution did so to protect Brown and Morrison, the defense attorney alleged, including Mike and Odessa Hively, Brown’s half-brother and sister-in-law and Dale Morrison, Grace Hanna, and Betty Bennett Pritt, Bobby Lee Morrison’s brother, mother and close friend.
     None of those people came forward when Brown and Morrison were jailed for the murders in 1983, the defense attorney said, and did not speak with investigators until 1992 when Beard was charged.

     Prosecutor Stephen Dolly, who took over closing arguments after Pocahontas County Prosecuting Attorney Walt Weiford was hospitalized Tuesday, told the jury the premise of a conspiracy against Beard wasn’t believable, noting that Alkire was "not out to get an innocent man. For all that fingerpointing at Bob Alkire, where’s the evidence to back it up?" Dolly asked the jury.
     "We wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for that phone call he made to Vicki Durian’s faher," Dolly advised the jury. "And that’s where he went too far. (Alkire) was put on to the defendant because of the defendant’s own actions."
     Franklin’s confession was not credible and didn’t work. Franklin, the prosecutor said, had some information and knew what people wanted to hear. "He's just like the guys who tell fortunes and read palms," Dolly argued. "He’ll give you what you want to hear, but nothing you can verify."
     Franklin’s confession kept people coming to see him, Dolly said, and bought him more time on Missouri’s death row. And if Franklin had been allowed to travel to West Virginia to testify in this case, as the prosecution planned, he’d have some "windshield therapy."
     "He’s not worth much belief," the prosecutor said.
     As for the Brown/Morrison theory, Dolly reminded the jury they had heard no evidence about them. Dolly said Brown’s former wife, Drema, was more likely the witness testifying to protect him. Drema Brown first told her story in 1983, Dolly said, and "now she’s stuck."
     The possibilites narrowed to Beard, Dolly said, reminding the jury that the prosecution witnesses had no stake in the outcome, while two notable defense witnesses, Beard and his wife, Linda, had much riding on the jury’s verdict.
     "It all comes down to the ‘team,’" Dolly said, Linda Beard’s description of her marital relationship. "Tell me they don’t have a stake in this."
     "When you look at the face of Jacob Beard, you look at the face of a man who has already committed murder twice," Dolly told the jury. "There is not much that would stop him now to keep his freedom."
     A female juror was dismissed Wednesday morning and replaced with a male alternate, causing the jury to have exactly the same 10-man, two-woman make-up as the Greenbrier County jury that convicted Beard.
     Once again, Jacob Beard was found not guilty of the locally infamous Rainbow Murders, thus ends a 20-year old story which again becomes an unsolved murder case in Pocahontas County history.

by Pamela Pritt
     Prosecutor Stephen Dolly will take over closing arguments in the Rainbow Murder Case after Pocahontas County Prosecuting Attorney Walt Weiford was hospitalized Tuesday, reportedly with a lung infection.
     Weiford was transported to Charleston Area Medical Center, Memorial Division. Dolly, who has aided Weiford throughout the trial, will have an hour to argue for the state in its case against Jacob Beard.
     Beard, 54, is standing trial for the second time for the murders of Nancy Santomero, 19, of Huntington, Long Island, New York, and Vicki Durian, 26, of Wellman, Iowa. He was convicted of the murders in 1993 and sentenced to two concurrent life terms with no mercy, meaning he would never be eligible for parole; however, Senior Status Judge Charles Lobban set aside the jury’s verdict last year based on the deposition of a convicted serial killer and the affidavit of one of Beard’s former co-defendants who says he was with a state’s eyewitness all day on June 25, 1980, the day of the murders and neither saw Beard nor the shootings.
     Santomero and Durian were found shot to death at close range on Briery Knob, a remote section of southern Pocahontas County. The women were apparently traveling to an annual gathering of the Rainbow Family.
     A member of Beard’s defense team, George Castelle, made a motion for a mistrial with prejudice, meaning Beard could never again be prosecuted for the murders.
     Castelle said he compared the testimonies of 10 prosecution witnesses and found "deeply troubling results."
     Those witnesses have changed their testimonies, Castelle said, and alleged a "concerted effort by someone on the prosecution team" to elicit "massive coordinated perjury."
     Castelle further alleged that the prosecution had concocted the story against Beard in an attempt to convict a man they knew to be innocent.
     Dolly took exception to Castelle’s argument, pointing out that the defense attorney had no evidence of "some conspiracy on the part of the state." The prosecutor said that inference bordered on the insulting.
     Lobban denied the motion, saying credibility of witneses was for the jury to determine. "This is not a matter the court takes away from the jury," Lobban said.
     The judge will instruct the jury Wednesday morning. Closing arguments are expected to conclude in the afternoon.

by Pamela Pritt
     The man on trial for murdering two young women hitchhiking to a Rainbow Family Gathering in 1980 took the stand in his own defense Friday, denying involvement in the crimes, but unable to say where he was conclusively for a period of several hours.
     Jacob Wilson Beard, 54, a Pocahontas County native, tesitified that he was only casually familiar with former co-defendants Richard Fowler, Bill McCoy and Arnold Cutlip, while he said he did know former co-defendant Gerald Brown from a business relationship.
     Beard is on trial for the second time for the murders of Nancy Santomero, 19, of Huntington, Long Island, New York, and Vicki Durian, 26, of Wellman, Iowa. Santomero and Durian were found shot to death at close range on Briery Knob, a remote section of southern Pocahontas County, on June 25, 1980.
     He was convicted in 1993 of the murders and sentenced to two life terms without mercy. The conviction was overturned last year after Senior Status Judge Charles Lobban set aside the jury’s verdict and freed Beard on $150,000 bond. Lobban based the decision on the sworn deposition of a death row serial killer and the affidavit of one of Beard’s former co-defendants who potentially impeaches a key prosecution witness.
     The defendant testified the ordeal had been difficult. "It’s been very hard," he said. "It’s destroyed my family."
     Beard said he was working all day on June 25, 1980, for Greenbrier Tractor Sales. His time card for that day shows a handwritten check-out time of 5:15 p.m. Beard was not in the shop at GTS the remainder of the week, but out on service calls for customers noted on the card. Times for June 26 and 27 are hand-written, as well, by someone other than Beard.
     Later, Beard said, he attended a Pocahontas County Board of Education meeting where the consolidation of Hillsboro School with Marlinton was to be a topic. He was home by 5:45 p.m., he said.
     His lead defense attorney, Stephen Farmer, asked Beard to name all the farms between GTS and his home near Hillsboro. Beard named over a half-dozen farms that patronized GTS while he worked there. But he could not conclusively pinpoint at which one he stopped. Beard said he may have been delivering a part rather than making a service call, but he could not recall exactly where he was.
     "I wish I could," Beard testified. "I have tried to remember."
     Beard said he knew he left GTS for work purposes, otherwise he would have punched out.
     The defendant said he had gone to farms to find records, but none was available. "They don’t keep them that long, apparently," he said.
     GTS always kept a record of work activities, but none was available when he tried to obtain them in 1993, he said, because those records are destroyed after 10 years. "In 1980 there would have been either a repair order, a parts ticket or a warranty claim to verify where Jake Beard was," he testified.
     Beard said he remembered that his wife had called him to remind him of the board of education meeting and to ask he bring home some items from the store. He produced a receipt from J & K Market in the amount of $10.95 for June 25, 1980; however, under cross examination, Beard admitted that neither a time nor a name is associated with the purchase on the receipt.
     As he traveled home that evening, the defendant testified he saw Christine Cook, now Borchert, with Paulmer "Buddy" Adkison and his former co-defendant Bill McCoy with two unfamiliar women at a place called "Lover’s Lane." Beard placed the group there at 5:30 p.m.
     Borchert testified she did not know Beard then and could not place him on Droop Mountain that day, although she did place McCoy and another co-defendant, Richard Fowler, at the entrance to Droop Mountain Battlefield State Park, along with two women she didn’t know.
     Beard testified he arrived at the board of education meeting between 7:15 and 7:20 p.m., 10 minutes before it was scheduled to begin. The meeting was held in the elementary school cafeteria, he testified, but the location did not change, as another witness has testified.
     He testified he was not drinking that day and only drank a small amount on weekends at home, never in bars or out with other people; however, Beard said the 1983 death of his father caused him to drink more heavily. "I loved my dad very deeply," he testified. "I was upset."
     By that time, Beard was already a suspect in the slayings of Santomero and Durian because of a telephone call he made to Durian’s father in Iowa in early July, 1982. Beard said he made the calls because he’d read an article in a newspaper about the unsolved murders. Efforts to find an anniversary article about the murders in the three publications he read, including this newspaper, were unsuccessful, he said.
     "I thought it was awful two girls had died in our home county and they hadn’t found the killer," he testified. "I told Linda if this was our daughter I’d be on the police every day to find out what had happened. I thought maybe the parents could prod the police into doing something or bring in another law enforcement agency."
     He said he told Howard Durian he didn’t believe the police in the area were capable of solving the crime, but added he thought the Pocahontas County Sheriff’s Department was in charge of the investigation. "I may have told him the people in the area were sorry that it happened in our area."
     He didn’t give his name to Howard Durian, he said, because he thought "it would be better not to become involved in it. I didn’t know anything about the murders," he testified.
     Beard said he got the Durian’s telephone number through an operator. He testified he did not also call the New York family because he could not say Santomero.
     A month later, Beard testified, he was contacted by police and voluntarily went to State Police headquarters in Marlinton where for the first time he met Sergeant Robert Alkire.
     Beard said he cooperated with police in the interview and admitted making the telephone calls.
     Stephen Dolly of the Prosecuting Attorney’s Institute asked Beard to use his own time line to determine at which farm he might have stopped.
     Dolly said farms in Frankford could be eliminated because Beard could not have seen Cook, Adkison and McCoy at Lover’s Lane 15 minutes later because of driving time. Dolly also said the clockout time of 5:15 p.m. meant Beard could not have stopped at farms north of Droop Mountain if he had seen the trio at 5:30 p.m. Thus, Dolly concluded, Beard’s whereabouts were narrowed to two farms near Renick. Beard appeared to agree with all Dolly’s assumptions, but could not say with certainty he was at either farm.
     But Dolly’s presumption that Beard had gotten Durian’s telephone number because he might have been still in possession of some of the victim’s belongings met with an emphatically negative answer from Beard.
     The prosecution put on seven witnesses in rebuttal in an attempt to diffuse the defense’s case for Beard.
     Three witnesses testified to discredit Joseph Paul Franklin’s confession to the murders. Franklin’s October, 1997, deposition played a part in Senior Status Judge Charles Lobban’s decision to grant Beard a new trial. That two-hour deposition was played for the jury in this trial since Franklin refused to grant attorneys a second chance to depose him.
     Robert Cassidy, of Nashville, Tennessee, said he sold a Browning 30.06 to Franklin either on June 24 or June 25, 1980. Cassidy said he recalled the date because Tuesday and Wednesday were his only days off from CSX Railroad and had been each week for 20 years.
     The Nashville man said he had advertised four guns separately in the Trader’s Post, a free publication, between June 16 and June 23, 1980, and knew he sold the Browning 30.06 after the advertisement ran out.
     Cassidy said he got a phone call from a man in a nearby town and gave him directions. He recalled the man as being six feet tall and about 180 pounds with reddish hair and glasses with one thick lens. Cassidy said the man never smiled. "I couldn’t break that personality," he said.
     The man picked up the gun in Cassidy’s kitchen and aimed it, Cassidy said, and then said he’d take the weapon, giving Cassidy $400 in cash.
     "He had a roll that would choke a mule," Cassidy testified.
     Franklin is legally blind in his right eye and has a habit or either wearing wigs or coloring his hair. He has admitteed robbing a bank in Burlington, North Carolina, on June 24, 1980.
     Six months later Cassidy was visited by FBI agents who asked him to identify a picture of the man who bought his gun. But Cassidy told those agents in 1980 that he sold the gun on July 5. He had not changed his story until 1998 when he testified in a hearing in Lewisburg. Cassidy said he could not have sold the gun on July 5, a Saturday, because he was working that day. "It is my 100% belief that I sold the gun on the 24th or 25th," Cassidy said.
     Sergeant Steve Dawson testified he had checked out Franklin’s map, which he drew in 1984. "I don’t think it’s an accurate depiction myself," Dawson said. "It all took place on the other side of the road. That’s not how it was."
     The sergeant also said he checked mileage from the scene where the bodies of Santomero and Durian were found to the interstate and found it was 30.5 miles. Dawson said on a normal day travel would take 45 minutes. Franklin said he traveled less than 15 minutes with the women before he shot them.
     And David Sterling, who resides in a federal penitentiary in Florence, Colorado, said Franklin told him he hadn’t committed the murders of Santomero and Durian.
     Sterling said he wrote a letter to the FBI after he saw Franklin’s appearance on the CBS news program 60 Minutes II. Franklin’s confession on that program did not match the story Franklin told him in prison, Sterling said.
     Sterling said Franklin began to talk about the West Virginia murders in terms that closely mirrored another murder he’d committed in either Ohio or Wisconsin. He began to discuss the West Virginia case after a reporter visited him in Marion, Illinois. Sterling said Franklin told him he got information on the case from newspapers, but never showed him the articles.
     Sterling said Franklin was talking about religion and "saving his soul or what was left of it" when he denied killing Santomero and Durian. "He said ‘I swear to God I didn’t do that. I wasn’t anywhere near there when that happened,’" Sterling testified.
     The prisoner testified he neither sought nor expected any favors in exchange for his testimony.
     Lead investigator Robert Alkire was back on the stand to refute some of Beard’s evidence in testimony.
     Alkire said he asked for all work records from Greenbrier Tractor Sales pertaining to Beard’s acitivities on June 25, 1980. "The only thing we could find was a time card," Alkire testified.
     Grace Hanna testified that she saw Beard’s former co-defendant Arnold Cutlip between 2 and 2:30 p.m. on June 25, 1980, on the side of Droop Mountain with Johnnie Lewis, Paulmer Adkison and Christine Cook. Cutlip, whose affidavit also prompted Lobban to grant Beard a new trial, testified that he saw Hanna between 5 and 5:30 p.m. that day.
     Mike Hively testified that access to hot water was available in the front of Gerald Brown’s trailer. Hively said he believed that a door to the hot water heater was still in place in the summer of 1980. During deer season of that year, Hively said he believed Brown replaced the door with a piece of plywood, which was not nailed in place, but set in in place of the door. Brown is now deceased. Hively is Brown’s half-brother and next door neighbor.
     Brown’s former wife, Drema, testified that the plywood was nailed there and that access to water was in back of her home.
     A friend of key prosecution witness Johnnie Lewis testified that Lewis told him he was on Briery Knob the day of the murders. Droop Mountain resident Jerry Morrison said Lewis told him a year later that "he was back there" the day Santomero and Durian were killed.
     Testimony concluded Friday. Lobban will instruct the jury Tuesday and attorneys are expected to give closing arguments Tuesday afternoon.
     The trial has lasted nine days and over three dozen witnesses have testified.

by Pamela Pritt
     A former codefendant in the Rainbow Murder Case testified Thursday that he was with state’s eyewitness Johnnie Lewis all day the murders occurred and saw neither Jacob Beard nor the murders.
     Arnold Cutlip, of Marlinton, said Lewis lived with him and was with him every day cutting locust posts.
     Lewis has testified that he was with Cutlip on Briery Knob when he saw Beard shoot two women.
     The 54-year-old Beard is accused of the 1980 slayings of Nancy Santomero, 19, of Huntington, Long Island, New York, and Vicki Durian, 26, of Wellman, Iowa. Santomero and Durian were found shot to death at close range on Briery Knob.
     The women were apparently traveling to an annual gathering of the Rainbow Family held that year on the Monongahela National Forest.
     Beard was convicted of their murders in 1993. His conviction was overturned last year by Senior Status Judge Charles Lobban after a serial killer confessed to the crimes under oath and Cutlip filed an affidavit with the court that potentially impeaches Lewis’ testimony.
     On the day of the murders Cutlip said he and Lewis worked all morning cutting locust posts, then delivered the posts to a customer in Buckeye. After he was paid, Cutlip said, he and Lewis went to Marlinton where he made arrangements to purchase a pickup truck from Paulmer "Buddy" Adkison. Cutlip said he and Lewis intermittently drank liquor and beer all afternoon, stopping at two different bars to drink beer, as well as purchasing a 12-pack of beer to have on the road.
     Cutlip said he and Lewis were at Droop Mountain Battlefield State Park for a brief period with Adkison, but did not see Beard’s former codefendants Gerald Brown, Richard Fowler and Bill McCoy or the prosecution’s other eyewitness, Winters Charles Walton.
     Other witnesses have placed all those people at the park entrance and one witness tesitified she saw two unfamiliar women in Fowler’s van.
     Cutlip said he did hear community rumors that Beard had committed the murders and was asked if he was afraid of Beard. The witness said he told people he was not.
     Under cross examination, Cutlip admitted that he had himself said Beard may have committed the murders, but testified later that he also had speculated that Brown and a companion may have killed Santomero and Durian.
     Prosecutor Stephen Dolly asked Cutlip about a statement he had given police just one week after the murders occurred. Dolly said that statement reflected some details that were not in Cutlip’s testimony, while it did not include other details Cutlip now recalls.
     Cutlip said he did not read the document before he signed it.
     The witness said he was offered immunity in the murders if he testified against Beard, but not if he told any other narrative of the day. He did not accept the agreement and testified he could again be charged with the crimes. "I just couldn’t do it," Cutlip testified. "I know what Johnnie said wasn’t true."
     "If Johnnie Lewis is telling the truth and if Pee Wee Walton is telling the truth and if the folks who say they saw the defendant and Pee Wee and Bill McCoy and you and Richie Fowler are telling the truth you could be in trouble, couldn’t you?" Dolly asked.
     "Looks like it," Cutlip said.
     "You have a personal stake in making sure these folks (the jury) do not believe Johnnie Lewis and the rest of the State’s witnesses?" Dolly inquired.
     "I know nothing about the others, I know about Johnnie Lewis," Cutlip said.
     Beard’s wife, Linda Beard, tesitified on behalf of her husband.
     Linda Beard described a hardworking husband who had a good job and a loving family who worked alongside him on the farm. "We were a team," she said.
     She testified her husband came home around 5:30 p.m. on June 25, 1980, they ate supper and left to attend a meeting of the Pocahontas County Board of Education where consolidation of Hillsboro School with Marlinton was to be a topic.
     She called her husband at 3:50 p.m. to remind him of the meeting and to ask him to bring home some items from the store, she testified.
     Linda Beard said her husband was "definitely not" drinking that evening and exhibited no unruly behavior at the meeting where several people were angry and speaking loudly.
     They arrived at the meeting on time, she said, but had to wait outside for a time because the meeting was delayed to accommodate the large crowd that attended. They waited with Patty and Roger Pritt and "Skeeter" and Nora Lou Workman, Linda Beard testified.
     She was working the 11 p.m.-7 a.m. shift at Denmar State Hospital, she testified, and left the meeting early. Her husband rode home with the Pritts, she said.
     Linda Beard found out about the murders of two young women on Briery Knob when she arrived at work, she said, but no one had any details about the crimes, including the identities of the women.
     She tesitifed she loved her husband and very much wanted him to be with her.
     Linda Beard’s cousin, Patricia Westfall, formerly Pritt, also testified that Beard was neither drinking nor unruly at the board of education meeting. Westfall placed Jacob Beard outside the board of education meeting before 7:30 p.m.
     Roger Pritt’s 1993 testimony was read into the record. It mirrored that of Westfall’s. Roger Pritt is now deceased.
     Another witness has testified Beard was drinking at the meeting.
     Gerald Brown’s former wife, Drema, testified that she was at home most of the day on June 25, 1980, and no one visited their Droop Mountain home. Drema Brown said she would recall if Fowler had stopped by, particularly if he brought two young women.
     Gerald Brown is now deceased.
     Drema Brown said she clearly recalled the events of the day because her mother and sister were arriving from Ohio that evening. She said she ran out of cleaning fluid and went to the Droop Cash Store to purchase some. The store was out of cleaning fluid, so she went to her aunt’s home to tell her she was going to Hillsboro to make the purchase.
     She said she wanted someone to know where she was in case her family arrived, she said.
     The witness also testified that Fowler, Beard and McCoy did not come to her home that evening to wash out Fowler’s van. Brown said access to water was around the back of the trailer, but said plywood was nailed over the hot water heater in the trailer’s front.
     Brown testified that her husband came home drunk and wanted her to transport him to move a log truck. They left home about dusk, she said.
     Drema Brown’s sister, Teri Kershner, testified that she, too, remembered no one else visiting the Brown home that evening. Kershner said she and her mother visited other family in the area for a time that evening. Kershner remembered Brown made pork loin and green beans for dinner that evening, she said, as was the tradition in the family.
     The defense is expected to wrap up its case today.
     Judge Lobban informed the jury that the trial would go into next week.

by Pamela Pritt
     The jury in the Rainbow Murder Case heard the confession of a convicted serial killer Wednesday. Joseph Paul Franklin, 50, confessed that he killed the women because one of them said she dated black men and the other said she would do that if she had the chance.
     "So I just decided to waste them at that time," Franklin said.
     Defense attorneys representing Jacob Beard played the video deposition that lasted over two hours.
     Beard, 54, is on trial for the murders of Nancy Santomero, 19, of Huntington, Long Island, New York, and Vicki Durian, 26, of Wellman, Iowa. The women were found shot to death at close range on Briery Knob, a remote section of southern Pocahontas County.
     After a nearly three-week trial in May, 1993, Beard was convicted of the slayings of Santomero and Durian and sentenced to serve two life terms without mercy in the penitentiary. However, Senior Status Judge Charles Lobban overturned Beard’s conviction and ordered a new trial based in part on Franklin’s deposition.
     Franklin has periodically confessed to and then denied committing the murders. The self-proclaimed white supremacist is now on death row in Missouri for the murder of a man outsidea synagogue. Beard has always maintained his innocence in the June 25, 1980, murders.
     During the 1997 deposition Franklin said he picked up the women on an Interstate highway when he was headed west out of Virginia. He turned the conversation toward their feelings about blacks, he said, and had already planned to kill both women when they stopped at a convenience store where he purchased gasoline.
     Franklin said he drove to a remote area 10-15 minutes from the convenience store when he turned off onto a small road surrounded by trees and pulled a gun on the women as he told them he was going to rape them.
     Both women refused his advances, he said, and he realized trying further would be futile.
     Franklin said he was either standing outside the car or on his way out of the car when he shot the first woman, then he fired a wild shot a the one in the back, shot the first woman again, then "whirled around and shot, aimed more carefully with both hands at the second one and shot her in the head that time." Franklin said he was a few feet from the women at the time.
     He first said he pulled the woman in front out the driver’s side, but then agreed with Simms that he pulled them out on the passenger side and left their bodies beside the dirt road.
     Franklin said he fled the scene and drove out in the same direction he’d arrived. He met a car and averted his head so the driver wouldn’t recognize him, he said. He disposed of the women’s duffel bags in "what appeared to be a dump" several miles from where he shot the women, he said.
     The serial killer said he was on his way to Lexington, Kentucky, after he had robbed a bank in Burlington, North Carolina, on the previous day. He traveled to Virginia Beach, Virginia, in the interim, he said. Franklin said he was driving a black Chevrolet Nova that had been light blue before he painted it. That pattern matches vehicle paint chips found on one of the women’s bodies, according to a State Police Crime Lab sergeant.
     Franklin described the gun he used to kill the women as a foreign-made .44 Magnum with a seven-and-a-half inch barrell. In 1984 he drew a map of the area where he said he killed the women. Defense attorneys have called the map "detailed," while prosecutors have called it "vague."
     The women’s backpacks were found nearly 60 miles from where the murdered women were found in a rhodendron thicket off Rt. 60 near Hico.
     The confession was a videotaped deposition taken in October, 1997, by Prosecuting Attorney Walt Weiford and defense attorney Brandon Simms.
     Prosecutors had wanted to bring Franklin to West Virginia to testify in their case against Beard; however, Missouri officials refused to grant Franklin travel time. Franklin also refused to speak with attorneys in the case in a second video deposition because it would be the fourth time he has spoken with West Virginia authorities. According to lead investigator Robert Alkire, Franklin said four was a bad number for him.
     Another defense witness placed two women, one in a red sweatshirt, getting into a 1969-1971 black Chevrolet Nova.
     John Blake, of Maxwelton, said as he was driving home from work he saw two women headed north on Rt. 219 just above Lewisburg. Blake said he stopped at the Little General Store in Maxwelton and the women entered the store, as well.
     Blake said they left with a tall, thin male who had neither tatoos nor glasses. Franklin has both.
     The Maxwelton man positively identified the red University of Iowa athletic department sweatshirt Santomero was wearing when her body was found on Briery Knob. While Blake said he was sure one woman was wearing blue jeans, one was wearing fatigue pants and the other lavender slacks.
     Blake said he could have seen the women as early as 3:30 p.m. or as late as 6 p.m.
     Three police officers who formerly worked on this murder case testified for the defense.
     First Sergeant Mike Jordan, who operates out of Elkins with the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, said he interviewed state’s eyewitness Johnnie Lewis in June, 1992, when Lewis said he didn’t see the murders occur.
     Jordan, who in 1993 testified that he went to Marlinton to "blow apart" Lewis’ statement said Wednesday that statement meant he wanted to "pick apart his statements, the three of them, and see which one was the truth."
     The sergeant said when he left the interview he believed Lewis was being truthful when he said he didn’t see the murders. Jordan said he interviewed Lewis only once and largely worked on another aspect of the investigation.
     Jordan also brought in another BCI investigator, Dallas Wolfe, to interview Lewis.
     Wolfe testified that Lewis said he was intimidated and had told the officers what they wanted to hear when he said he had witnessed the shooting.
     Wolfe interviewed Winters Charles Walton in June, 1992, as well when Walton told him "he wasn’t sure whether he heard shots or whether he dreamed it," Wolfe testified.
     The investigator said he didn’t challenge Walton’s story until he said he couldn’t remember whether he’d seen it or heard it.
     Both officers testified that they had not spoken to Lewis or Walton since June, 1992, and had not been involved any further in the investigation.
     Another officer who was on the scene of the murders also testified for the defense, as well. Gary Hott, who was a State Police corporal stationed in Marlinton at the time, said he recalled the bodies of two women on Briery Knob in June, 1980. Hott said he noted a wet smear of blood on one woman’s hand. There was no wound on her hand, Hott noted. The former State Police Corporal said he noted no rigor mortis in either woman.
     Hott noted that dew had fallen and it was "clammy" outside.
     He said he couldn’t attempt a guess at a time of death and said under cross examination that the smear of blood could have occurred if the bodies were moved.
     Beard’s former employer and a coworker testified on his behalf.
     Both Alex Arbuckle, who is currently vice-president of Greenbrier Tractor Sales, and Karen Willis, who has been a bookkeeper there for over 20 years, said it was not unusual for GTS employees to write in a quitting time on their time cards since employees were frequently called out to work for a customer in the afternoons.
     Arbuckle said Beard was a good employee whose work was more than satisfactory. Beard was a good mechanic, Arbuckle testified, who got his work done and was dependable.
     Beard tesitified in 1993 that he was working in the field for a GTS customer whose name he couldn’t remember on the afternoon of June 25, 1980, and later attended a meeting of the Pocahontas County Board of Education to oppose the consolidation of Hillsboro school with Marlinton.
     Lewis’ former attorney, Marilyn Thompson, testified to what Lewis said to her when third parties were present. Thompson could not testify to anything Lewis told her alone because of attorney-client privilege.
     Thompson said she had no independent recollection of any of Lewis’ statements and refreshed her memory by reading her 1993 testimony.
     Beard’s former codefendant Arnold Cutlip is expected to testify today. Cutlip filed an affidavit with the court which potentially impeaches Lewis’statement that incriminates Beard.

by Pamela Pritt
     The prosecution presented its key witnesses Tuesday in the 20-year-old Rainbow Murder Case.
     One of those witnesses said he saw Jacob Wilson Beard kill two young women on Briery Knob, a remote section of southern Pocahontas County.
     Johnnie Washington Lewis, of Hillsboro, said on the witness stand he recalled hearing gun shots and seeing one girl fall and the other start running away from Beard. He shot her then, Lewis testified.
     "Did you see who shot her," asked Prosecuting Attorney Walt Weiford.
     "Jacob," replied Lewis.
     Beard is accused of the 1980 murders of Nancy Santomero, 19, of Huntington, Long Island, New York, and Vicki Durian, 26, of Wellman, Iowa.
     Durian and Santomero were hitchhiking to a Rainbow Family Gathering held that year on the Monongahela National Forest. Their bodies were found shot to death at close range.
     Beard was convicted of the homicides in 1993 and sentenced to two life terms. The jury recommended no mercy, meaning Beard would never be eligible for parole; however, Senior Status Judge Charles Lobban set aside the jury’s verdict last year and granted Beard a new trial based on the deposition of a convicted serial killer who confessed to the crimes and the affidavit of one of Beard’s former codefendants who potentially impeaches Lewis.
     Lewis said he believed Beard shot the women because he saw Beard’s arm move at the same time he heard shots. Lewis testified he did not see a weapon because Beard’s back was to him.
     "Did you ever forget about what you’d seen?" Weiford asked.
     "Tried to but I couldn’t," Lewis said.
     No one had to help him remember anything, he said.
     The man testified he was seated in Arnold Cutlip’s truck when he witnessed the murders. Lewis lived with Cutlip at the time.
     He also placed Beard and former codefendants Gerald Brown, Richard Fowler, Bill McCoy and Cutlip together at Droop Mountain Battlefield State Park as well as on Briery Knob in his testimony.
     Lewis said after the murders occurred he and Cutlip went to Hillsboro to a beer joint. Lewis said he had only one beer, while Cutlip "got pretty well loaded."
     He lived with Cutlip only two or three days after the murders occurred, Lewis said.
     Lewis said he couldn’t remember exactly when he told police he’d witnessed the murders.
     But when he did tell police, Lewis testified that a "big" fellow shook his handcuffs at him and made him feel "nervous." Police did not tell him what to say about the murders, Lewis said.
     Beard’s defense attorney Stephen Farmer questioned Lewis extensively on his several statements to police, some of which reflect his being there when the murders occurred and some of which reflect a denial he was there.
     "Sometimes you think you were there and sometimes you think you weren’t there?" Farmer inquired.
     "I think I was there," Lewis said.
     Weiford later asked Lewis why he at times said he wasn’t there.
     "Scared I reckon," he replied.
     "Why did you change your story?" Weiford asked.
     "Scared," Lewis said.
     The prosecutor briefly addressed Arnold Cutlip’s affidavit that says he was with Lewis all day on June 25, 1980, and they did not see Beard.
     "If Arnie Cutlip claims not to have seen the killings is that true?" Weiford asked.
     "No," Lewis said.
     "Why would he say something that wasn’t true?" the prosecutor asked.
     "I don’t know," Lewis said.
     "Would you change your story?"
     "No."
     "If you didn’t see these girls killed, now is the time to say," Weiford told Lewis.
     "I seen it."
     The prosecution’s other witness, Winters Charles Walton, said he recalled being on Briery Knob that day and placed Beard there with a weapon; however, Walton stopped short of saying he saw Beard shoot the two girls.
     Walton said he was with Fowler and McCoy when they found out two Rainbow Girls were in Renicks Valley. Fowler drove to the area just south of the Pocahontas-Greenbrier county line and observed the women hitchhiking.
     They picked up the girls, he said, and McCoy helped load their backpacks in the van.
     From there they drove to Gerald Brown’s trailer where McCoy made telephone calls to invite others to party. The girls left the van, he said, and McCoy and Fowler retrieved them. The group went to Droop Mountain Battlefield State Park where they met Paulmer "Buddy" Adkison, Christine Cook and Beard. Brown followed them to the park, Walton said, and Cutlip came along later with Lewis.
     Walton recounted later being on Briery Knob where the group drank, and all the men but Cutlip smoked marijuana. Fowler and McCoy wanted to have sex with the girls, Walton said.
     Those advances were rejected, Walton testified, but McCoy and Fowler held the girls in the van. One fled from McCoy and asked him why they were doing this, he testified. Walton said he told the woman he didn’t know.
     McCoy and Fowler gave up on their pursuits, Walton testified, and left the van to "party."
     Walton said he was seated in Fowler’s van behind the driver’s seat. He said he could see Beard coming down the hill with a rifle.
     Then everyone jumped up in the van, Walton testified, he thought because of shots, but could not recall.
     "I was pretty intoxicated by then," he said.
     However, Walton said "there was a panic" and he remembered a girl run to the side door of the van.
     "She was screaming, trying to get in," he testified. "She backed out."
     The girl was not able to enter the van because the men inside were standing in her way, he believed.
     "Do you know what happened after that?" Weiford asked.
     "She was shot, I guess," Walton said.
     Walton said he remembered a person in the door of the van with a gun, but could not remember who it was.
     While he recalled Fowler and two Dean brothers, Larry and a brother whose name he could not remember, were in the van with him, he could not say whether Beard or McCoy killed the women.
     "Was it Bill," the prosecutor asked.
     "I’m not sure," Walton said.
     "Was it Jake Beard?"
     "He was the one with the gun," Walton testified.
     Walton said after the shooting he "blacked out from the shock" and the combination of liquor and marijuana.
     "Were you scared?" Weiford asked.
     "Yes."
     Walton said he later remembered McCoy awakening him in the field above where the girls were murdered.
     "He asked me what I did it for," Walton said. " I said ‘what.’ He said ‘shoot them girls.’"
     Walton said he told McCoy he didn’t shoot the women, but suggested they report the deaths to the police. This suggestion angered McCoy, Walton testified, and McCoy "got mad." McCoy hit him in the stomach and said, "we ain’t goin’ to the law," he testified.
     Walton said he didn’t recall seeing the bodies of the women.
     Under intense cross-examination by Farmer, Walton said he was telling the truth when he told investigators he knew nothing of the murders and only recalled details when a "big" police officer picked him up at his workplace and threatened him, hit him in the face, bending his glasses, and told him he could be hit so nothing would show.
     The officer took him into the back room of the Marlinton State Police Detachment. In there, Walton testified, the officer, identified as Sergeant Robert Estepp, shoved him from his chair and placed his foot on Walton’s neck. Walton said he was "intimidated" by Estepp’s actions, and subsequently gave police a statement about the murders, but maintained that Estepp had not told him what to say that day when Weiford questioned him again.
     As Farmer pummeled Walton with questions about his memory of the day the murders occurred and when and how it grew, Walton repeatedly said he remembered picking up the women.
     "You’re not afraid of Mr. Beard are you?" Farmer asked.
     Walton eyed Beard for several moments before answering in the negative. He also said he did not fear Fowler and McCoy.
     "Because you don’t know who shot these girls." Farmer said.
     "Not for sure," Walton replied.
     "You’d be afraid of somebody you saw kill two people." Farmer stated.
     Walton agreed he would.
     Farmer took each of Walton’s several statements and dissected them before the jury, pointing out some inconsistencies in details, but Walton agreed with Weiford that the gist of all the statements was the same after 1992.
     Walton said he began to recall the murders in 1985 after a conversation with a coworker at Denmar State Hospital. "I remembered we stopped and picked up two girls," he testified.
     He dwelt on the memory, he said. "I pretty well thought of it every day," he testified. He started to remember more things, he testified.
     But Walton did not go to the police with his recollections. "I was holding back," he testified. "I didn’t want to get involved."
     When lead investigator Robert Alkire questioned him in March, 1992, Walton said he provided Alkire with a list of people who were on Briery Knob that day, including Beard. Walton also testified that he called Alkire on occasion because he "wanted to tell him about those two girls."
     The prosecution rested its case Monday, but will call one witness out of order.
     Senior Status Judge Charles Lobban denied a defense motion for a directed verdict of acquittal. Farmer told the court the prosecution’s case was "guilt by association."
     Lobban said the evidence was sufficient to go to the jury.
     The defense will begin its case today with over 30 witnesses expected to be called over the course of the next week.

by Pamela Pritt
     A man who once was charged with murder in the Rainbow Case waivered Monday on the witness stand when asked questions about the day the murders occurred.
     Bill McCoy, of Fairlea, said under direct examination by Steve Dolly of the Prosecuting Attorney’s Institute that he recalled talking with one of the girls and wanting to make a date with her.
     "Do you remember which one?" Dolly asked.
     "Nancy," McCoy replied.
     However, McCoy said he was not successful and left Droop Mountain Battlefield State Park to go to Hillsboro.
     In a statement given to investigators last year, McCoy placed the defendant in the case, Jacob Beard, at the park along with Richard Fowler, Winters Charles Walton, Arnold Cutlip, Johnnie Lewis and Gerald Brown.
     Beard is on trial for the murders of Nancy Santomero,19, Huntington, Long Island, New York, and Vicki Durian, 26, of Wellman, Iowa, for the second time. His 1993 conviction was set aside last year by Senior Status Judge Charles Lobban after a convicted serial killer confessed to homicides and Cutlip filed an affidavit that said he was with a key prosecution witness all day on June 25, 1980, and didn’t see Beard.
     McCoy was charged along with Beard and five other men in 1992. Charges against him were subsequently dropped after Beard was convicted.
     Santomero and Durian were found shot to death at close range on Briery Knob, a remote section of southern Pocahontas County. The women were apparently traveling to a Rainbow Family Gathering held that year on the Monongahela National Forest.
     Two witnesses have testified that they saw Fowler, McCoy and Walton pick up two young women hitchhiking in nearby Renicks Valley.
     McCoy at times read from his statement and at other times appeared to testify from memory.
     According to what McCoy read from his statement, he recalled picking up the women and helping load their belongings into Fowler’s van.
     They traveled to Brown’s trailer, McCoy’s statement said, where they stayed about 30 minutes and then went on to Droop Mountain Battlefield State Park where they drank beer.
     Beard was drinking as well, McCoy’s statement reflected.
     Santomero and Durian were outside the van when he departed for Hillsboro, McCoy said in his statement.
     McCoy’s statement also reflected his return to Droop Mountain to Brown’s trailer where Beard, Fowler, Cutlip, Brown and Walton were "cleaning some blood out of the van."
     There were "puddles of blood in the back of the van," McCoy said he told investigators.
     And he noticed bullet holes in the rear passenger side of Fowler’s van, McCoy testified, as he pointed to the area in pictures of the vehicle.
     "When did you notice bullet holes?" Dolly asked.
     "When we was cleaning out the van," McCoy answered.
     According to McCoy’s statement, the men were cleaning out the van with a garden hose.
     McCoy also testified he later saw Fowler fixing the bullet holes in the van.
     Dolly is assisting Pocahontas County Prosecuting Attorney Walt Weiford.
     Under cross examination, McCoy said his statement to police was a work of fiction.
     "That statement isn’t true is it?" lead defense counsel Stephen Farmer asked.
     "No," McCoy responded.
     McCoy acknowledged that while he was incarcerated in Las Vegas, Nevada, last year, he was addicted to heroin and was in withdrawal when investigators spoke with him. McCoy said he was "hallucinating."
     McCoy described the symptoms of heroin withdrawal and he said he was sick at his stomach, hallucinating, urinating and vomiting. "You’ll do anything," he testified.
     "Did you want to help them because they could help you?" Farmer asked.
     "I was just wantin’ to get out to get what I needed," McCoy said.
     He got his information from the investigators, he said, while they sat and talked for some time before he gave his statement. McCoy said he told them what he believed they wanted to hear
     Further, McCoy said, investigators gave him money for rent and paid for him to enter a methadone program.
     "They said they wanted me to give a statement then and there and then they’d get me out of jail and get me in a treatment program," he testified. "They sent me $500 for rent so they’d know where I was."
     McCoy said he was never around Santomero and Durian and didn’t know anything about Beard being around them, either.
     "I think I was fishing," McCoy testified..
     However, he first said he was not fishing with Mike Brock, a Hillsboro resident who said McCoy called him on the day the women were murdered and invited himself fishing. Brock said McCoy had not done that before and had never gone fishing with him since. Later in his testimony, he said he might have been with Brock.
     McCoy also said he was probably in Hillsboro drinking
     "Could you been running around with Richie Fowler?" Farmer asked.
     "No."
     "Did you see Jacob Beard?"
     "Don’t know. Don’t think so."
     "Did you see these girls?"
     "Definitely not."
     "I don’t want to lie here," McCoy said.
     McCoy also said he spent some time at the gathering. "Just for a day and a night," he said. "Everybody was partying."
     He did not say if he attended the Rainbow Family Gathering before or after the murders occurred.
     McCoy was granted immunity in the murders in exchange for his testimony just before court opened on Monday; however, Dolly asked that McCoy to be treated as an adverse witness, or a witness who is not willing to cooperate.
     Dolly called two West Virginia State Police Sergeants in an attempt to discredit McCoy’s testimony.
     Both officers had traveled to Las Vegas to interview McCoy while he was incarcerated.
     And both maintained that while McCoy said he was in heroin withdrawal, he appeared to be coherent.
     Sergeant Jack Chambers said he assisted lead investigator Robert Alkire in obtaining drug treatment for McCoy.
     "He looked pretty much like he did today," said Sergeant Scott VanMeter. "He was coherent, able to converse."
     VanMeter said McCoy didn’t do anything unusal during the course of the interview. Both officers testified they had never been around anyone who was in heroin withdrawal.
     Another witness Monday placed McCoy with Fowler, Cutlip and Brown at Droop Mountain Battlefield State Park and also said she saw two unfamiliar girls in Fowler’s van.
     Christine Cook Borchert, of Morgantown, said the group was drinking heavily, as well as smoking marijuana.
     Borchert said her boyfriend at the time, Paulmer Adkison, said he "wanted to go party with the Rainbow girls."
     "I do believe there were two girls in the van," Borchert said.
     Borchert said she did not know Jacob Beard, but there were other people present she didn’t recognize.
     "I don’t know if he was there or not," she testified, "because I don’t know Jacob Beard."
     Once again, Farmer contended with a witness whose story had changed since 1993.
     "You’re story’s grown quite nicely, hasn’t it?" he asked Borchert.
     "If you’re accusing me of lying, no," Borchert said. " You tend to block out things you don’t want to think about."
     In 1993 Borchert testified that although she saw Fowler, McCoy, Brown and Cutlip, she did not see any other women on Droop Mountain that day. Two other witnesses have come forward with additional details that did not emerge in their original testimony.
     Both those witnesses cited fear as the reason they withheld information from investigators. Borchert was not asked by either side why she was now recalling additional details.
     Court was dismissed early in the day so attorneys could take a video deposition.
     State’s eyewitnesses Winter Charles Walton and Johnnie Lewis are expected to testify Tuesday.
     Beard, 54, has maintained his innocence in the slayings of Santomero and Durian since his 1992 arrest.

by Pamela Pritt
     A witness testified Friday that because of threats from the defendant in the Rainbow Murder Case, she was afraid to give investigators more details when she was questioned.
     Betty Bennett Pritt, who now lives in Virginia, said Jacob Beard came to her home in a Hillsboro trailer park and made threats to her child.
     "He just came in and proceeded to tell me," she said. "He got down on the floor at my feet and laid his arms across my knees and told me bluntly and coldly I was not to say anything at all. I was to keep my mouth shut.
     "He said ‘Stevie will be very easy to take to my farm to ride ponies and he’ll never be heard from again.’"
     Pritt, who once had a relationship with Beard’s former co-defendant, Richard Fowler, said Beard specifically mentioned the Rainbow Murders during the course of the threat.
     Fowler confided in her, Pritt said; however, she was not allowed to testify about what he said because of the hearsay rule.
     Pritt’s son was three-years-old in 1980, she said.
     "You’re story has grown quite nicely, hasn’t it?" lead defense attorney, Stephen Farmer said.
     Pritt has on four other occasions said Beard had made threats to her son, but did not mention the Rainbow Murders.
     "I was afraid to say everything I wanted to back then," she said. "Because I didn’t know if Jake would be free to hunt us down."
     On the previous day, Odessa Hively also testified that she withheld information from investigators because she had children and felt threatened.
     Former Droop Mountain resident Bill Scott, now of Green Bank, testified that he saw Beard coming out the entrance to Droop Mountain Battlefield State Park between 3:30 and 4 p.m. on June 25, 1980.
     Scott said Beard nearly caused a collision when his vehicle came "sliding out" the park entrance onto the graveled shoulder.
     Beard headed north toward Hillsboro, Scott said.
     Scott is the second witness to place Beard on Droop Mountain at a time when he has testified he was working in the field for a Greenbrier Tractor Sales customer whose name he doesn’t recall. Beard’s time card from Greenbrier Tractor Sales shows a handwritten clock-out time of 5:15 p.m.
     Another prosecution witnesses testified concerning the whereabouts of Beard’s former co-defendant Bill McCoy.
     Mike Brock, of Hillsboro, testified that he heard shots coming from the Briery Knob area on the afternoon of June 25, 1980, while he and a companion were groundhog hunting in the nearby Hills Creek area. Later, Brock said McCoy called him and invited himself fishing.
     McCoy had never done that before, Brock said, and has not gone fishing with him since.
     Brock said at that time he went fishing every day about 6 p.m.
     Dale Morrison, of Renick, testified he saw Fowler, McCoy and two other men in Hillsboro a few days after the murders fixing bullet holes in Fowler’s van door. The bullet holes had been fired from the inside, Morrison testified.
     Morrison said Fowler explained to him that McCoy had gotten drunk and shot and they "had to take the gun away from him."
     For the remainder of the day experts took the stand, including a defense witness on human memory and prosecution witnesses on ballistics and paint chips.
     Dr. Elizabeth Loftis, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle, outlined typical traits of human memory.
     Loftis pointed out studies that show adults can be suggestible when given inaccurate details about their childhood, as well as when repeatedly told incorrect information.
     Alcohol or marijuana intake, stress and trauma can contribute to memory loss, as well, she said.
     Prosecution witnesses Winters Charles Walton and Johnnie Lewis have both testified that they were drinking when the murders occurred. And Lewis has at times said he did not recall seeing the murders and at other times he has. Loftis called that "unusual."
     Lewis testified under oath in 1993 that while he sat in Arnold Cutlip’s truck he saw Beard shoot the women.
     Cutlip has filed an affidavit that says he was with Lewis all day on June 25, 1980, and they did not see Beard.
     Under cross examination by Steve Dolly, from the Prosecuting Attorney’s Institute, Loftis testified that an adult’s memory could be enhanced if given correct information about an event.
     Loftis’ testimony was taken out of order because of the distance she had to travel.
     Dolly is assisting Pocahontas County Prosecuting Attorney Walt Weiford with the case.
     A ballistics expert testified on behalf of the prosecution about the bullet fragments found in Santomero’s body.
     Former State Police Sergeant Clarence "Rocky" Layne testified that the bullets were reloads, or used shell casings refilled with powder and capped with new bullet tips. Those bullets were likely .41 or .44 Magnum, he testified.
     Layne also said the weapon was more likely a revolver than a rifle, but could have been a Ruger .44 Magnum carbine.
     Sergeant John Giacalone, who is stationed at the Crime Lab in Charleston, testified about the paint chips found on one girl’s body. Giacalone also testified in Beard’s first trial.
     The sergeant said the chips were layered black primer, gray primer, blue paint and black enamel.
     Although Fowler’s van did have a 12 inch black stripe painted around the rocker panel, according to its previous owner, the van was painted blue metallic. Giacalone said the chips may have come from a point of impact or a patched rust spot and would thus, not match the rest of the van.
     After court proceedings closed on Friday, prosecutors learned that Joseph Paul Franklin, the serial killer who has confessed to the murders, will not grant a second deposition.
     According to lead investigator Robert Alkire, Franklin said this deposition would be the fourth time he had spoken with West Virginia authorities and four is a bad number for him.

by Pamela Pritt
     A prosecution witness testified Thursday she omitted portions of her recollections of the day two women were murdered in Pocahontas County from her 1993 testimony because she was afraid of the defendant.
     Odessa "Sis" Hively, of Droop Mountain, testified she saw Jacob Beard at the entrance to Droop Mountain Battlefield State Park between 5 and 5:30 p.m.on the day of the murders.
     Beard, 54, is accused of the 1980 murders of Nancy Santomero, 19, of Huntington, Long Island, New York, and Vicki Durian, 26, of Wellman, Iowa.
     The women were apparently traveling to a Rainbow Family Gathering held that year on the Monongahela National Forest.
     In 1993 Hively placed Beard’s truck at the park entrance along with Gerald Brown’s and Arnie Cutlip’s trucks and Richard Fowler’s van. But Hively then said she saw no people at the park.
     Thursday, Hively testified that Beard was in his truck and Brown and Cutlip were standing beside the vehicle.
     Brown, Cutlip and Fowler were indicted along with Beard in 1993. Brown is now deceased. Both Cutlip and Fowler are expected to testify during his current trial.
     Defense attorney Stephen Farmer reminded Hively of her previous statements and testimony that mentioned only vehicles at the park.
     "I’m aware of that," she said. "I was scared at that time. I was scared because I have two kids."
     "Your story’s grown quite nicely, hasn’t it?" defense attorney Stephen Farmer asked Hively under cross examination.
     "That’s the way I remember it," she answered. "I have told my parents that. Many times."
     Prosecuting Attorney Walt Weiford asked Hively about her fear.
     "Were you afraid of Jake Beard?" he questioned.
     "Yes, I was," Hively said. "I knew I saw him (in 1993) but I was afraid."
     Beard testified in his 1993 trial that he was working in the field for a Greenbrier Tractor Sales customer whose name he could not remember and quit at 5:15 p.m. That time is hand-written on Beard’s time card.
     Hively also testified she saw Beard later at a Pocahontas County Board of Education meeting where, she said, the defendant appeared to be drinking.
     "His face was red as blood," Hively said. "And he was up arguing and you could smell it on him slightly.
     "I wasn’t sitting that far away."
     In fact, Hively said, she was seated directly across from him and his wife, Linda.
     Hively testified that although the meeting was supposed to begin at 7 or 7:30 p.m., it was delayed because so many people attended to oppose consolidating Hillsboro School with Marlinton.
     The meeting was moved to the Marlinton school cafeteria, which was being used for a dinner, Hively said. The meeting did not begin until 8 or 8:30 p.m.
     Droop Mountain resident Steve Goode testified that he saw Beard, Fowler and McCoy at Brown’s trailer on the same evening with a water hose connected from the residence and in the back of the van. The men appeared to be washing out the back of the van, he said.
     "They just worked around the van like they were washing it," Goode said of he trio.
     He said he walked past the Brown residence on his way to meet Mike Hively, Sis Hively’s husband, to spend the evening cutting bait.
     Mike Hively was not home, Goode said, so he waited on the porch of the Hively residence where activities at the Brown residence were clearly visible.
     On cross examination, defense attorney Miles Morgan asked Goode that if Brown’s former wife, Drema, said that the trailer offered no access to water from its front would she be wrong.
     "She’s wrong," Goode said.
     And the man who has investigated these murders for nearly 20 years briefly took the stand to outline how the investigation evolved in 1980 and how Beard became a suspect.
     Former First Sergeant Robert Alkire, now a temporary investigator for the Pocahontas County Prosecuting Attorney’s office, said he was called to the scene of the crimes on June 25, 1980, but stopped first at Pocahontas Memorial Hospital in Marlinton to examine the bodies of Santomero and Durian.
     Alkire said he noted their belongings and the fact Santomero was missing a sandal.
     The women had no identification, thus, Alkire testified, the police used several means, including area newspapers to try to identify them.
     Investigators believed the women were traveling to the Rainbow Gathering because of their clothing, he said.
     Santomero and Durian were identified by family members nearly two weeks later, he said.
     Their belongings, including Santomero’s missing sandal and both backpacks, were found at the end of deer season in 1980 near Hico, almost 60 miles away, Alkire testified.
     Beard became a suspect in 1982 after he called Durian’s father in Iowa and said he was ashamed of the police in Pocahontas County because the case was not solved, Alkire testified. Beard told Howard Durian he "wanted to get the ball rolling again on the investigation," and that he would call back the next evening.
     Howard Durian contacted Alkire who said he made arrangements for Iowa authorities to trace the call.
     The call was traced to Beard’s Denmar residence, Alkire testified. The man did not identify himself in either call, Alkire said.
     Alkire said after he questioned Beard in 1982, the man told him to check a Chevy Nova which was up on blocks on a Hillsboro side street and to talk to two local women. None of those leads produced any evidence, Alkire said.
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