Wasn't fit to confess, Thacker witness says

Abuse, head blows, gunshots all cited

POTEAU, Okla. -- A psychologist testified Friday that confessions Elvis Aaron Thacker made that he murdered Briana Ault in 2010 were unreliable because of the state of his mental health and the circumstances under which he made the admissions.

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John Fabian of Austin, Texas, testified in LeFlore County, Okla., District Court that Thacker and his brother Johnathen suffered from developmental deficiencies caused by physical, sexual and emotional abuse while growing up.

In addition, Elvis Thacker suffered many blows to the head during his life, including being struck by the bucket of a backhoe, that, when added together, caused brain damage, developmental delay and psychological problems.

Those problems, Fabian said, were coupled with the pain and trauma of just being shot during his arrest in Fort Smith on Sept. 15, 2010, and the fear he might die. They left Thacker unable to make rational decisions about the confessions.

The jury of six men and six women Friday finished the second week hearing testimony in the trial of Elvis Thacker, who is charged with first-degree murder and forcible sodomy in the Sept. 13, 2010, death of Ault, 22, at a secluded pond just across the state line from Arkansas in Pocola, Okla. Oklahoma is seeking the death penalty against Thacker.

During Thacker's arrest at a Fort Smith apartment in a police raid, he was shot twice and hit with Tasers after stabbing a police detective who was posing as an Oklahoma Gas and Electric Co. worker to try to confirm the brothers were in the apartment.

In an ambulance about to take him to a hospital, Thacker told a medical technician that he had killed "that girl." He repeated the confession to a detective in the ambulance, then again to an Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation agent in the hospital before going into surgery. He made the confession once more to a Fort Smith police detective in the hospital Oct. 8 after waking from a coma.

Since then, Thacker has recanted his confessions and his defense team has posed to jurors that Thacker's brother Johnathen murdered Ault by himself and blamed the killing on his brother.

Johnathen Thacker initially was charged with his brother. In April 2014, he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, agreed to testify against his brother in court and to accept a life sentence in prison without parole in exchange for avoiding the death penalty.

"This is one of the worst childhoods I've ever seen," Fabian said as he described the boyhood of Elvis, Johnathen and their siblings who he said "lived in a house of horrors."

He said the children, three boys and two girls, were neglected by their parents who divorced when the children were young. They also were subjected to a series of men their mother Marsha Gregory took up with.

One in particular, Fabian said, took in at least some of the children and inflicted severe abuse on them, beating them, raping them, starving them, hanging them on hooks and locking them in their rooms.

Gregory, he said, would come by the house periodically to collect money from the man for the sex acts.

The abuse was intense, frequent, severe and chronic, started from an early age and lasted a long time, he said.

Johnathen Thacker was the target of sexual abuse more than the other siblings, Fabian said. He also said Johnathen Thacker was more sadistic than Elvis Thacker and was more lacking in conscience. Johnathen Thacker also developed a preoccupation with violence and with sex, he said.

Mental health records showed that Johnathen Thacker once sexually assaulted one of his sisters and wore her underwear, Fabian said.

Elvis Thacker's defense team has told jurors they intended to show that Johnathen Thacker killed Ault for money.

Defense team leader Gretchen Mosley with the Oklahoma Indigent Defense System has told jurors Elvis Thacker had planned to move to Indiana to live with a girlfriend but didn't have enough money to pay for a ticket for Johnathen Thacker. So Johnathen Thacker decided to rob Ault so he could join his brother whom, testimony showed, he relied on to take care of him.

She said both brothers used the cell phone that was in Elvis Thacker's name and that Johnathen Thacker used it to text Ault the night she was killed with a request that she give him a ride to Texas Road where the pond was located.

According to testimony, Elvis Thacker was immobile around the time of the murder. He was recovering from fractures in his left fibula and tibia and an anterior cruciate ligament tear and needed a brace and crutches to move around. He was not able to negotiate the long and rough trail, forcing Ault along with him, to the pond where Johnathen Thacker testified his brother raped Ault, forced her to perform oral sex and then cut her throat.

In cross-examination by First Assistant District Attorney Margaret Nicholson, Fabian admitted that Johnathen and Elvis Thacker suffered the same results of their abuse, such as anger, aggression, post-traumatic stress disorder, violence, impulse control, developmental delay, suicidal thoughts and paranoia.

Testimony resumes at 8:30 a.m. Monday.

State Desk on 04/23/2016

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