Guilty, Thacker jury says; death-or-life decision next

POTEAU, Okla. -- A LeFlore County District Court jury deliberated three hours Friday before convicting Elvis Aaron Thacker of first-degree murder and forcible oral sodomy in the Sept. 13, 2010, death of Briana Ault of Fort Smith.

The foreman of the six-woman, six-man jury recommended the maximum 20-year sentence for the sodomy conviction.

Since Oklahoma is asking for the death penalty for the murder, District Judge Jonathan Sullivan ordered jurors to return to court at 8:30 a.m. Monday to begin the penalty phase of the trial.

Ault's mother, Bethany Ault-Pyle of Fort Smith, wept when the verdicts were announced and hugged many of the large contingent of family and friends who filled the benches on the side of the courtroom where Ault-Pyle was sitting.

Across the aisle, one of Thacker's sisters, Sandra Whitlock, wept into a tissue.

Thacker, 28, and his brother Johnathen, 27, both of Crawford County, were charged with first-degree murder and forcible oral sodomy in the killing of Ault, whose nude body was found with her throat cut floating in a secluded pond just across the Arkansas state line in Pocola, Okla., on Sept. 13, 2010.

Johnathen Thacker pleaded guilty in April 2014 to first-degree murder and told jurors during testimony at the trial he expected to be sentenced to life in prison after his brother's trial.

During closing arguments Friday, LeFlore County District Attorney Margaret Nicholson reminded jurors of the multiple confessions Elvis Thacker made to killing Ault.

She said he made the first confession as he lay in an ambulance after he was shot the night of his arrest in Fort Smith three days after Ault's murder. He told a Fort Smith police detective that he killed Ault. When the detective asked him how, Elvis Thacker responded that he cut her throat, information that had not been made public at that time.

As further proof of his guilt, Nicholson said, Elvis Thacker also knew the wording of a text message prosecutors say he sent on Ault's phone to Ault's friend pretending to be Ault. The message said the friend she was giving a ride to had found another ride and she was going home.

According to testimony, Ault had earlier been at a downtown Fort Smith bar when she received the text message from an ex-boyfriend with a broken leg who was asking for a ride to Texas Road. Elvis Thacker had confessed that he had already killed Ault and sent the later message pretending to be her to explain why she didn't return to the bar.

"Consider who would admit to murder if he didn't do it?" Nicholson asked jurors.

Concluding her arguments, Nicholson pointed to letters the brothers exchanged while in jail. She referred to one in which Elvis Thacker wrote that the police knew the brothers were together the night Ault was killed.

Defense attorney Gretchen Mosley argued that Elvis Thacker's confessions were false and involuntary.

She said he was intimidated into confessing and was vulnerable after being shot during his arrest and left bleeding on the floor of the apartment for about 30 minutes before medical help arrived while officers asked him to confess, believing he was about to die.

He remained under the eye of the police at the hospital with police officers on guard in his room around the clock, some of whom he accused of pinching off his breathing tube and pulling out his IV.

Once he was away from the police and back in Oklahoma in 2012 to stand trial, he abandoned his false confession and recanted his story, Mosley said.

She said he had lied in his confession to save his brother from prosecution for the murder and to try to please his abusive mother.

If anything, Mosley said, Elvis Thacker was guilty of lying to investigators in offering his false confessions and in helping Johnathen burn Ault's car after the murder.

Mosley also argued that Johnathen Thacker killed Ault to rob her, to fulfill a sexual fantasy, then blamed the death on his brother.

"He's a really, really sick guy and this is a really, really sick crime," Mosley told jurors.

She said Elvis Thacker loved Ault as a friend since their high school days and never would have hurt her.

But Johnathen needed money for a bus ticket so he could follow his brother, who he relied on to care for him, to Indiana where Elvis Thacker planned to move to live with a girlfriend, Mosley said.

Mosley said Johnathen Thacker was angry at his brother for not paying for his bus ticket, and that when he was angry at Elvis Thacker he destroyed the things he loved.

Mosley said there was no physical evidence to corroborate Johnathen Thacker's story about his brother's involvement in Ault's death.

"You promised in jury selection you would require certitude, that he was guilty without a doubt before you would convict him," Mosley said. "The question is do you have doubt? If you have doubt Elvis participated in Briana Ault's death, your verdict must be innocent."

Court will resume at 8:30 a.m. Monday.

State Desk on 04/30/2016

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