POTEAU, Okla. -- Johnathen Thacker apologized for his part in killing Briana Ault before he was sentenced Friday to spend the rest of his life in prison.
"The only thing I can say is I'm sorry," Thacker, 27, said. Ault's mother, Bethany Ault-Pyle, who attended nearly every hearing in the almost 6-year-old case, sat dry-eyed as Thacker spoke.
Before LeFlore County, Okla., District Judge Jonathan Sullivan passed down the sentence, Thacker had to listen to Ault-Pyle's emotional victim impact statement, in which she said, "My family had their hearts ripped out" by Thacker and his brother Elvis.
Elvis Thacker, 28, was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison without parole plus 20 years in Ault's death.
Johnathen Thacker "deserves to rot in prison. He deserves everything that happens to him in prison. He doesn't need to ever walk free to harm someone else," Ault-Pyle said in her statement.
Before her daughter's death, Ault said after court, she was a death penalty opponent. But after listening in the preliminary hearing to how the Thacker brothers acted and what they did to her daughter, she said she went to the district attorney and asked him to seek the death penalty.
Johnathen Thacker pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in April 2014 in a deal with the state of Oklahoma to avoid the death penalty Oklahoma was seeking for the Thackers. Under that deal, he agreed to testify against his brother during a three-week trial that ended May 3.
A jury of six women and six men in April convicted Elvis Thacker of first-degree murder and forcible oral sodomy. In his sentencing hearing Wednesday, Elvis Thacker declined to make a statement. His attorney Gretchen Mosley told Sullivan that his client wanted to continue to maintain his innocence.
Johnathen Thacker said the memory of what he and his brother did to Ault haunted him. He said he has tried without success to understand why they killed Ault. He said he would take it back if he could.
"For the past five years, there hasn't been a moment that I have not thought about this," he said.
Johnathen Thacker said in his statement that he did testify truthfully in his brother's trial.
But Ault-Pyle said she didn't believe Johnathen Thacker's contention that he walked back to Ault's car and waited there while Elvis Thacker attempted to drown her before cutting her throat.
"Not for a moment do I believe that he walked away," she said. "He made the human choice to do everything he did that night. No one made him. He did it."
According to evidence in the trial, Elvis Thacker had sent text messages to Ault during the night of Sept. 12 and early morning of Sept. 13, 2010. He asked her to give him a ride to somewhere on Texas Road on the undeveloped western edge of Fort Smith.
Johnathen Thacker testified that his brother wanted to rob Ault, who he mistakenly believed had won $1,600 at a casino.
After receiving the text messages, Ault, who was at a downtown Fort Smith bar, told a friend that she was going to give a ride to an ex-boyfriend and would be back in 20 minutes.
Elvis Thacker directed Ault to a secluded pond off Texas Road that was just across the Arkansas state line in Pocola, Okla. When she parked, he forced her to take off her clothes, cut her in the back and forced her to perform oral sex on him.
Johnathen Thacker testified that he tried to make his older brother stop, but Elvis Thacker threatened him, and he didn't try to interfere further.
Elvis Thacker marched Ault down a dirt road to the pond where he forced her to perform oral sex on both brothers then forced her to wash out her mouth with pond water, Johnathen Thacker testified.
Elvis Thacker tried to drown her, Johnathen Thacker testified, but Ault fought back and Elvis Thacker ended up cutting her throat and leaving her nude body in the pond where a fisherman found her that evening.
The brothers, who were being sought on a warrant on suspicion of rape in another case, were developed as suspects in Ault's murder based on her cellphone records, which showed her receiving text messages from Elvis Thacker's phone the night she died.
The brothers were arrested two days later by police wanting to serve the rape warrant and to question the Thackers about Ault's death. Police said that when they arrived, Elvis Thacker stabbed a detective, and they responded by shooting Thacker twice. After he was shot, Elvis Thacker confessed to killing Ault, though he recanted after doctors treated his wounds.
Like his brother, Johnathen Thacker will be returned to Arkansas. He will serve a 25-year sentence he was given in 2011 for attempted capital murder in the injuring of a police officer during the 2010 arrest and for the reduced charge of kidnapping in the rape case. Elvis Thacker was sentenced to 30 years in the Arkansas Department of Correction.
After serving their sentences in Arkansas, the brothers will be turned over to Oklahoma authorities to begin serving their life sentences.
NW News on 07/02/2016