Alibi witness takes stand

By Bill Byrd
Times West Virginian

FAIRMONT November 20, 2008 12:13 am

— A Buckhannon woman told a Marion County circuit court jury Wednesday that a man accused of fatally shooting another man in Fairmont was with her — at her home in Buckhannon — shortly before the murder occurred.
Carrie Short was calm and self-assured despite repeated questioning by Marion Prosecutor Patrick N. Wilson as she gave an alibi for Lincoln S. Taylor, 24, of Huttonsville.
Wilson was openly skeptical, particularly when Short also said she didn’t learn until October of last year — and her first visit to see Taylor in jail – that Derrick D. “Lil’ D” Osborne, 22, was killed on the night of Memorial Day 2007.
She didn’t go to police or his office with her alibi claim, she acknowledged. Instead, she told a private investigator for Taylor’s defense team. Paul J. Harris of Wheeling and Joseph Wallace of Elkins are defending Taylor.
Harris indicated the defense filed notice of its alibi defense later in October 2007.
Taylor is charged with conspiracy to commit murder and first-degree murder — the state claims he was the triggerman — for his alleged role in Osborne’s murder. Osborne was shot and wounded three times on Highland Drive in Bellview shortly before midnight on May 28, 2007.
“Shots fired” calls from neighbors started coming in to the county’s 911 center at 11:47 p.m., according to previous testimony.
Short testified she was flipping through the channels on her television in Buckhannon and preparing to go to bed when she heard a knock at the front door.
“I remember the news was going off,” she said, agreeing with Harris that it must have been around 11:30 p.m. Taylor was there by himself. He left the next morning about 5 a.m., Short said.
Short’s testimony capped the second day of the defense case.
Harris also called Taylor’s mother, Marian Taylor, to testify.
She denied she had made a call from her home phone to a cell phone used by her son early on the morning of May 29, the day after the murder.
He was sleeping on a couch as she got up to prepare to go to work at Tygarts Valley High School, where she is a special education teacher, she said.
He did not exhibit any difference in behavior from Memorial Day to July 4, the day he was arrested, she said. She and his father raised three girls and him. When her husband died unexpectedly at Christmas 2000, their son was only 16.
Although he could have gone directly to college when he graduated with honors from Tygarts Valley, the younger Taylor chose to pursue his dream of attending the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Although he was the valedictorian of the Class of 2002, he did not have sufficient education in subjects like calculus and physics, subjects not offered at the rural, 500-pupil high school.
Taylor agreed to attend a Military Academy Preparatory School in New Jersey for one year. He did well and was admitted to West Point.
But after completing two-and-a-half years as a cadet, poor grades in one math class led to a board hearing, she said.
“At West Point, you have to do well in all your classes,” across the board, she said.
Although he had returned home, he wanted to get re-admitted. By going to Fairmont State University and concentrating on Homeland Security studies, he hoped to re-apply to West Point, she said. He enrolled in the fall of 2006. He also finished the spring 2007 semester at FSU.
His mother said she thinks a major reason for going to FSU was that his girlfriend, Jessica Smith, was also attending school there. The two lived together in a city apartment during the week, Smith testified last week.
His mother said he had come home for the summer when classes let out in mid-May.
At the time, he was seeing a lot of Steven Podolsky, a boyhood friend. Podolsky was living in an unheated garage and he frequently had meals at her house. He also frequently slept over.
But when Lincoln broached the idea of letting Podolsky live with them, she said “no.”
Podolsky, 25, also of Huttonsville and a self-described opiate addict at the time, has been a key witness for the state. He testified last week that he went along with Taylor’s idea to buy drugs for resale in Randolph County in the spring of 2007.
Taylor agreed to shoot Osborne, a new drug dealer in Fairmont, for their drug connection in the city, Podolsky said. He said Taylor owed money for drugs they were getting from two other co-defendants: Lafayette Y. “Goldy” Jenkins Jr., 25, and Donnell D. “Nels” Lee, 24. Like Podolsky, Jenkins has agreed to plead guilty to lesser offenses. Lee was convicted at trial in August on first-degree murder and conspiracy charges.
Podolsky said he was Taylor’s getaway driver on the night of the murder. Up until the last moment, he never believed Taylor would actually shoot Osborne, someone neither man knew, Podolsky said.
Harris also called Amy Weekley and Albert Sigley. The couple, who lived in a house on Highland Drive, said they saw Lee and Podolsky that night, but not Taylor.
Weekley said she saw Podolsky get out of the driver’s side of a car parked in their driveway and run over to the passenger side after the shots were fired. She also saw Lee run up and jump behind the wheel of the car, she said. Lee had lived with Osborne and their girlfriends in an apartment not far from the couple for several weeks in the spring of 2007.
Later, after the murder and when police had flooded the neighborhood, she saw her boyfriend talking to another black man and Podolsky. The men had a big Brindle pit bull with them, she said.
She said she did not tell police “because I didn’t want to get involved and I was scared” of retaliation from Lee and his friends. She did talk to a defense investigator later.
When they were interviewed about 90 minutes after the shooting by a city detective, they did not tell him of their sightings, they said.
On cross-examination, Wilson elicited that the couple were angry at city police because Sigley had been convicted about a decade ago for a property crime. Weekley had also been implicated in the crime, but she got probation and he went to prison, Wilson said.
The couple also had said they would take an opportunity to show that police were incompetent, Wilson said, reviewing investigative reports and statements, including one they gave to a defense investigator.
The prosecutor also questioned them why they would deliberately keep information from police in a murder investigation just because of a grudge. He did not call them to testify in the Lee trial, nor were they called by the state in this trial, he said.
But Harris asked the couple if the defense investigator had been rude to them like police had been, or had “talked down” to them. He also asked them how certain they were of their identifications, a question that drew the response “100 percent” from Weekley and “I know he looked like Lee” from Sigley.
Short described a strong and secretive relationship with Taylor that started when she was 13 or 14 and he was 17 or 18, she said.
On direct, Harris asked if she knew she was risking a lot by coming forward.
“There’s no conceivable reason to come here and put your future at risk, is there?” Harris asked her. She agreed, but she said she still considers Taylor a good friend despite the charges.
It has not been a romantic relationship since they broke up in her sophomore year, she said. He always stayed in touch even as they moved on in their lives and had relationships with other people, she said.
Because both had lost their fathers at an early age – she lost her father when she was 15 — they also had a bond.
For her part, she did not talk openly about her continuing friendship with Taylor, she said. She and Smith had been on the same cheerleading squad at Tygarts Valley, she said.
When Taylor was with her, he would tell Smith he was watching a movie with friends but without specifying that he was with her, Short said. Seeing each other on Memorial Day and Father’s Day was one of their traditions, because each missed their father on those days, and each felt they could explore those feelings with each other.
She agreed with Wilson that they had continued their relationship for the past four-and-a-half years. Taylor had a key to the “fixer-upper” house she had bought in Buckhannon with money she inherited from her father’s life insurance policy.
She told a defense investigator that Taylor tried to see her “anytime he could.”
She was at the beach on July 4, 2007, with friends. Her mother called to tell her that her stepfather had heard that Taylor had been arrested for murder that day.
When she came back from the beach, she said she did not investigate the murder. There were a lot of rumors floating around and she ignored news accounts of it, partly out of habit.
She had always kept their relationship confidential. It was hard to hear other people talking badly about Taylor, but she had always stayed silent, Short said.
Wilson pressed her about not listening to or reading any news accounts and also about why she didn’t go to police when she realized Taylor had been with her on the night of the murder.
She said simply she went to the defense.
“There is no doubt in my mind,” that he spent the night of Memorial Day 2007 with her.
When Wilson said Taylor must not have gotten to her house until around 11:30 p.m., Short replied softly and determinedly: “But I still got to see him on Memorial Day.”
E-mail Bill Byrd at bbyrd@timesw.com.

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