Bob Sam Castleman, a former attorney and municipal judge from Pocahontas, was sentenced Friday to 40 years in federal prison after a judge found that he killed his son's best friend last year to stop him from testifying against the father and son in a federal drug case.
Castleman, 64, wasn't charged in federal court with murder, but after a day-long sentencing hearing for three methamphetamine convictions, U.S. District Judge Leon Holmes said the greater weight of evidence proved that the former lawyer shot and killed 34-year-old Travis Blaine Perkins early April 14, 2013, in his Pocahontas apartment. That triggered a sentencing enhancement that federal statutes limited to 40 years -- essentially a life sentence for Castleman.
Perkins was one of eight people, including the father and son, who were jointly indicted on meth-trafficking charges in 2012. He was scheduled to plead guilty on April 18, 2013, under a cooperation agreement with federal prosecutors. His scheduled plea was posted online in the publicly accessible court computer system on March 20 and was reported by the Pocahontas Star Herald on April 11.
Castleman was recorded a year earlier, shortly after his indictment, telling his son in a telephone call that if he lost an effort to have certain evidence suppressed at trial, "I'm just hoping they haven't turned Travis." At the time, son Robert Jerrod Castleman was in jail, where all inmate calls are recorded.
Perkins -- Jerrod Castleman's best friend -- was a major player in the methamphetamine conspiracy case, and his testimony was expected to carry considerable weight against the Castlemans, who by December were the only living defendants who hadn't forged plea agreements and were expected to go to trial. Among the other defendants was Trisha Mulligan, who was married to the Pocahontas police chief when indicted. Her husband, Chad Mulligan, later resigned, and she was sentenced last year to three years' probation for possessing methamphetamine that she bought from Perkins.
The younger Castleman ended up negotiating a plea agreement just before his father's trial began. On Dec. 18, exactly one week before Christmas, Jerrod Castleman testified tearfully, as the government's final witness, that his father had admitted killing Perkins with a 9mm handgun after entering Perkins' apartment in the middle of the night in a disguise -- a wig and a trench coat.
In 2004, the father and son were jointly convicted in federal court of mailing a live copperhead snake to another man, which resulted in the elder Castleman surrendering his law license and both men serving time in prison.
Holmes said Friday that he believed that Jerrod Castleman was telling the truth when he testified before jurors in December, and said prosecution witnesses did a good job on Friday of corroborating it.
According to that testimony, after being unable to reach Perkins by phone for more than a day, Perkins' landlord and friend, Randall Byrd, entered the apartment the evening of April 15, 2013, a Monday, with two other people. They found Perkins lying face-up on his bed, his legs on the floor, dead from two gunshot wounds -- one on the side of his nose and the other under his chin. He appeared to have been shot as he arose from sleep, and an investigator said the stiffness of his body and the smell in the apartment were consistent with him having been killed late Saturday night or early Sunday morning.
Ed Jernigan, an FBI agent based in Jonesboro, testified that one bullet was removed from Perkins' head, while the other went through him and was found near a bedroom closet.
Jernigan said that according to Jerrod Castleman, who is now in prison, his father told him that he drove from Pocahontas to Trumann on the night of April 13, 2013 -- a Saturday night -- to accompany his son's girlfriend, Kim Caudle, to Southland Park in West Memphis. Bob Castleman then left Caudle there with his cellphone for several hours, telling her to use it to call Jerrod, while he secretly doubled back to Pocahontas, killed Perkins and raced back to the racetrack, using two different circuitous routes to avoid any cameras that could detect his license plate number, the younger Castleman reported.
Jernigan said Bob Castleman's cellphone records confirmed that the phone was in the Tennessee cellphone network from about midnight Saturday until midmorning on Sunday.
Caudle, a dog-racing enthusiast who lives in Trumann, testified Friday that she went to the track with Bob Castleman "all the time." That night, she said, he handed her some cash and his cellphone, telling her that Jerrod wanted her to call him, and then disappeared. She said that just before he left -- though she didn't know where he went -- he placed a call to Jerrod on his phone. She said that would have been the call that records show was placed at 12:14 a.m.
Caudle said that when she next saw Bob Castleman, after 4 a.m., she suddenly remembered she was supposed to call Jerrod, and made the call. Cellphone records showed the phone was used only at 12:14 a.m. and then at 4:40 a.m., both in the Tennessee cell network. At the time, Jernigan confirmed, Jerrod Castleman was on court-ordered home detention at his mother's house in Pocahontas, monitored by an electronic ankle bracelet.
Wendell Jines, an Arkansas State Police investigator, testified that the track didn't keep surveillance tapes beyond 30 days, but that records showed Caudle's player's card was used throughout the night, while Castleman's player's card wasn't used. Caudle testified that she and Bob Castleman returned to Trumann sometime before noon Sunday after stopping for breakfast.
She said that she had heard the father and son talking about Perkins, with the younger Castleman always trying to reassure his father that if he could just talk to Perkins, he might be able to get him to "change his mind."
The circuitous route that investigators believe Bob Castleman used to drive between West Memphis and Pocahontas that night would have taken him about 4 1/2 hours round-trip if driven at normal speed, Assistant U.S. Attorney Anne Gardner said. She said that meshed with Caudle's recollection that she didn't see the elder Castleman for "three or four hours."
Defense attorney Blake Hendrix presented a credit card receipt indicating that Castleman had gone to a hotel to sleep while Caudle gambled, noting that the woman had to drive them from Trumann to the track because Castleman was too "messed up" on Xanax to drive. Hendrix said Castleman wouldn't have been able to orchestrate a murder scheme in his condition. But Gardner noted that Caudle also testified that Castleman was using methamphetamine, a stimulant. She said the hotel receipt was merely evidence of Castleman planning an alibi.
A state firearms expert testified Friday that the bullets used in the murder, and one of two bullets recovered from a shot-up tree at Bob Castleman's farm in Imboden, were made by the same manufacturer -- an "uncommon brand" in Arkansas. A tree expert testified that the bullets were fired into the tree sometime between October 2012 and April 2013, while it was dormant. Bob Castleman was jailed in May 2013.
In determining Friday that prosecutors met their burden of proving by a "preponderance of the evidence" that Bob Castleman killed Perkins, Holmes dismissed Hendrix's claims that Castleman didn't have enough time between the documented cellphone calls to make the drive and commit a murder.
"I don't believe someone in that position would be going the speed limit," the judge said. He added, "I have no doubt you can cut a lot of time off" by driving fast in the early morning, when traffic is light.
Holmes imposed concurrent sentences of 40 years, 20 years and four years, the maximums for conspiracy, maintaining a drug premises and being in possession of meth-making equipment, respectively. He overruled Hendrix's argument that to use the murder to enhance Castleman's federal sentence, prosecutors would have to prove the murder by a higher standard -- beyond a reasonable doubt.
Holmes also heard from Kimberly Gosha, Perkins' ex-wife, who testified that he took in her two young children as though they were his own and every year used his birthday money from his mother to buy them shoes. She said he wasn't popular growing up, and became "addicted" to the positive attention he got for selling meth.
A week before his death, she said, he went to church with her and her children and "accepted that what he'd done was wrong" and looked forward to changing his ways after serving a prison sentence.
"He was at peace," she said.
Metro on 09/13/2014