Published: September 18, 2008 01:17 am            

Third co-defendant says Taylor triggerman

Prosecution has one more witness to call

FAIRMONT — Like two other co-defendants who testified earlier this week, a third co-defendant of Lincoln S. Taylor, 24, said Wednesday that Taylor shot and killed a man late on the night of Memorial Day 2007.

Taylor is charged with murder and conspiracy for the slaying of Derrick D. “Lil D” Osborne, 22. Osborne collapsed and died shortly before midnight on the holiday after being wounded three times.

Osborne was literally “running for his life” as he ran from his assailant and into the backyard of a home on Highland Drive in Bellview, Marion Prosecutor Patrick N. Wilson has said.

Taylor’s trial before Marion Chief Judge David R. Janes and a jury of eight women and four men resumes at 8:45 a.m. today.

The state has one more witness to call, Wilson said Wednesday.

Paul Harris, Taylor’s defense lawyer, said in his opening statement Monday that Taylor has an alibi, a witness who will testify that the Huttonsville native was with her on the night of the murder.

The defense also plans to call witnesses who will say Donnell D. Lee, 24, one of the four defendants charged in the case, told them that he shot Osborne, Harris said. A jury convicted Lee of murder and conspiracy charges last month.

In his testimony Wednesday, Lafayette Y. “Goldy” Jenkins Jr., 25, not only said Taylor was the triggerman but also, for the first time, said Lee, too, was present at the murder scene.

Jenkins’ account also differs in several other respects from what the jury heard on Tuesday from Lee and Stephen H. Podolsky, 24, the self-confessed get-away driver for Taylor. Save for placing Lee at the crime scene, Jenkins’ story about the roots of the conflict with “Lil D” and subsequent events largely mirrors his testimony against Lee last month.

Podolsky, like Jenkins, took a plea bargain earlier this year. Podolsky and Jenkins agreed to plead guilty to lesser charges. Their plea agreements call for them to fully disclose their role and what they did in the crime and to testify against Lee and Taylor.

Jenkins has agreed to plead guilty to felony voluntary manslaughter and conspiracy. Podolsky has agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy and to being an accessory after the fact.

Podolsky told the jury Tuesday that he and Taylor were running up a drug debt to Jenkins. At Taylor’s initiative, he and Taylor were buying drugs from Jenkins for resale in Randolph County. But they were using a lot of the drugs themselves and were barely “breaking even” in the scheme, Podolsky said.

He estimated Taylor owed Jenkins about $2,000 at the time Taylor agreed to be the hit man to take down Osborne.

On cross-examination by Harris, however, Podolsky denied Tuesday that Lee was at the murder scene.

And Lee — Wilson played a 25-minute tape of a key interrogation of Lee taken July 2 by Fairmont police detectives for the jury — said it was Jenkins who decided that Osborne had to be killed. Lee and Jenkins were friends, and Lee was part of Jenkins’ drug crew in Fairmont.

Lee said Osborne, an up-and-coming drug dealer, was locked in a power struggle with Jenkins. After Osborne flashed a gun at Jenkins in a chance meeting at a local convenience store about a month before the murder, Jenkins became convinced that Osborne was a threat, Lee said in that police statement.

Lee said Jenkins told him he had “found somebody” to do the task: Taylor. Taylor owed Jenkins about $2,000, Lee said.

Lee said he showed Taylor and Podolsky where Osborne was living with a girlfriend. He also told them what Osborne looked like and told them what kind of car he was driving, Lee said in that interrogation.

Lee went on to reject a plea agreement and chose to stand trial.

Jenkins said Wednesday that while he and Taylor were in the North Central Regional Jail in Doddridge County after their arrests, Taylor told him that “Lee choked . . . that he (Taylor) had to step up to the plate,” and shoot Osborne.

Jenkins said he assumed Lee would be the triggerman. While he acknowledged that he had pressed Lee to take care of Osborne, and that initially, he had agreed with Lee that both of them should do the deed, Jenkins said he backed out of that plan. The problem had started because of a poor decision by Lee, Jenkins said.

He said the dispute with Osborne started when Lee “hooked up” Osborne with one of Lee’s girlfriends when “Lil D” arrived in Fairmont in 2006. Lee had another girlfriend at the time.

But Lee also kept up the relationship with the woman he had introduced Osborne to, Jenkins said. In fact, Lee, his girlfriend, and Osborne and Lee’s old girlfriend were living together at first in the same apartment on Highland Drive, Jenkins said.

When Osborne learned that Lee was still seeing his girlfriend, that started an argument between them, Jenkins said.

As word spread on the streets about the rift, Lee and his new girlfriend moved out of the apartment.

It became “like a high school situation,” Jenkins said. With rumors and threats flying between Osborne’s camp and Lee’s camp, and after Osborne flashed a gun at him, Jenkins said he realized something needed to be done.

“It was getting out of control,” Jenkins said. Taylor owed money to Lee, Jenkins said. Lee “knew how to spend money, but didn’t know how to make money.”

He told Lee he had to handle the situation. “Lee’s decision was to kill him . . . Yeah, I agreed at first (to do it with Lee) but I backed out of the situation,” Jenkins said.

Lee “got Taylor” to help commit the crime, he said. He, Lee and Taylor talked several times about it.

Taylor was saying “he was no rookie . . . he was a sharpshooter, a military dude.” Taylor had dropped out of West Point about a year before.

But Jenkins said he was under the assumption that Lee was going to be the shooter because Lee was a “macho man” and liked to be seen as tough.

“Lee still had an ego to protect . . . he let me in on the plans,” Jenkins said.

The day before the murder, he gave a Glock .40 caliber pistol to Lee, Taylor and Podolsky. Lee had earlier given the gun to him to hold in payment or as barter for drugs, Jenkins said.

After the murder, Lee came over to his house and gave him the impression that he had been triggerman. Jenkins, as he did in Lee’s trial, denied Podolsky’s account that he saw Taylor and Podolsky several hours after the murder.

“Lee came in (and said) ‘It’s taken care of,’” Jenkins said.

Jenkins said he was in contact with Taylor by cell phone after the murder. But he didn’t want Taylor and Podolsky coming to his house right after the murder, he said.

When he was in jail with Taylor, they talked in code, “like in parables,” Jenkins said. They also whispered to each other at the jail’s Wednesday and Sunday church meetings.

Taylor told him his strategy was “to go all the way to the (jury) box,” or to stand trial. If nobody talked, they wouldn’t be convicted, Taylor told him.

“He said he had witnesses . . . he said he had a girlfriend (who) would go all out for him . . . stand by him,” and give him an alibi, Jenkins said.

But Jenkins decided to negotiate a plea, rather than “roll the dice” by going to trial like Lee and Taylor, Wilson said.

“Absolutely,” Jenkins answered.

On cross-examination, Harris asked him about his statement to the court during his plea agreement hearing on May 1.

According to the hearing transcript on page 26, Jenkins told Judge Janes he gave the gun to Lee on the Sunday before the Monday holiday, the defense lawyer said.

On re-direct by Wilson, Jenkins said he misspoke then. He said Lee but he meant to say that he “physically gave” the gun to Taylor at that meeting, Jenkins said.

Lee and Taylor had talked to him about the crime, and Lee had come to him earlier and asked to use the gun, Jenkins said.

He agreed with the prosecutor that, in summary, Taylor took part in the planning and preparation.

Taking what he said Taylor told him and in the accounts offered by Lee and Podolsky, there’s agreement that Taylor “pulled the trigger,” Wilson said.

E-mail Bill Byrd at bbyrd@timeswv.com.

        

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