Posted on 11/04/2003 11:24:58 AM PST by HAL9000
LIBERTY, Mo. — The first day of Wayne DuMond’s murder trial was difficult for the mother of the 39-year-old Missouri woman he is accused of killing three years ago.Lois Davidson heard prosecutors tell jurors that her daughter, Carol Shields, was leading a "secret double life" when someone suffocated her on Sept. 20, 2000.
Much of the testimony in DuMond’s trial in Clay County Circuit Court touched on an extramarital affair that led Shields to the Kansas City apartment in which her body was found. "It was hard to sit through," Davidson said. "It was like she was on trial. They drug out all this bad stuff but nothing about [DuMond]."
DuMond is the Arkansas man who raped a 17-year-old cheerleader from Forrest City in 1984. His case attracted wide attention when someone castrated him before his 1985 trial.
DuMond moved north in 2000 after the Arkansas Post Prison Transfer Board released him to Missouri, the only state that would accept him. Within weeks of his arrival in Missouri, Shields was dead.
In his opening statement, Clay County Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Shane Alexander started with Shields’ activities on the day she died. "Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2000, began the same as countless other days for Carol Shields," Alexander told the jurors. "She had two errands to run before work."
First, she took co-worker Linda Ruiz to the Kansas City airport. "Other than the murderer, Linda Ruiz was the last person to see Carol Shields alive," Alexander said.
Then Shields, who lived in the suburb of Parkville, went to her boyfriend’s apartment in Kansas City to pick up money to pay a speeding ticket for his roommate. That’s where her boyfriend, Ricky Matthews, found her body. "The crime scene was remarkably clean," Alexander said in his opening statement. "The murderer took his time and tried to leave no evidence."
The killer took Shields ’ clothes and the ligatures he had used to bind her wrists and ankles. Nothing in the apartment was knocked over. "The murderer went into that apartment prepared — to kill," the prosecutor said.
Evidence will include results of tests on DNA samples investigators took from under the fingernails of Shields’ left hand, Alexander said.
Nine months after the slaying, a DNA examiner with the Kansas City Police Department received a report from a national database saying the DNA profile was consistent with Du-Mond, who was living in nearby Smithville at the time of Shields’ murder, Alexander said.
Police arrested him that day.
DuMond, 54, sat impassively at the defense table wearing a light-blue suit and blue tie. His supporters, including his wife, Terri, sat behind him while Davidson and her family occupied the courtroom behind the prosecution table.
The first of 13 witnesses to take the stand Monday was Shields’ 17-year-old son Kyle, who was 14 when his mother was killed.
Kyle Shields told the jury that when he left to catch the school bus a little after 7 a.m. on Sept. 20, his mother was preparing for work and his father was still asleep. After school, when he called his mother to take him to football practice, he was unable to reach her.
After practice, Kyle Shields went home alone, finished his homework and went to bed. A police officer awakened him around midnight and took him to the police station, where the teen learned his mother had been killed.
During cross-examination, the 17-year-old high school senior told the jury that his parents occasionally argued but never fought physically. He also testified that he wasn’t under the impression that his mother might be considering leaving his father.
Mark Shields next took the stand and told the jury that he and his wife had not been intimate for five years and said his wife "seemed a little different" in the summer of 2000. "She wasn’t home as much and talked on the cell phone more and went out with friends," he told Daniel White, chief assistant prosecuting attorney.
But his suspicions of a possible affair waned when his wife began spending more time with the family, he said. "Carol was the type of person that I would never think would have an affair, so I just put it out of my mind," he said.
During cross-examination, defense attorney Anthony Cardarella asked Shields if he ever felt like a suspect in his wife’s murder. "Yes, sir," Shields replied. "When did it first cross your mind that you might be a suspect?" Cardarella asked. "It crossed my mind when [police] were questioning me that night."
The defense attorney asked Shields what he would have done if he had learned his wife had been unfaithful. "I would have asked her to leave," he said.
Two residents of the apartment complex told the jury that they heard screams coming from the apartment around 8:30 a.m. on the day of the murder.
Two police officers who answered a dispatch to a "911 hangup" call from the apartment testified that they knocked on the door about 10 a.m. and no one answered, so they left the complex. The door was locked at that time, the officers testified.
After the lunch break, James Sisco testified about finding Shields’ body at the apartment he shared with Matthews.
When he and Matthews arrived home, Sisco said, the apartment door was slightly open. The two went in, and Sisco stayed in the living room reading a note that Shields had left for him about the speeding ticket while Matthews went to his bedroom. "Then, he [Matthews] was hollering at me to come back there [to the bedroom], and I was asking him what was wrong and he said, ‘ I think Carol’s dead, ’" Sisco said. "At first, I thought he was joking."
But when he entered the bedroom, Sisco saw Shields naked on the bed with a towel draped over her midsection. "I wasn’t sure what was going on," Sisco said.
The final witness of the day was Matthews, who admitted his affair with Shields. "What kind of person was Carol?" Alexander asked the Tennessee native. "Unbelievable — she was great...," Matthews said. "We were going to be together."
Matthews cried as he recounted finding his girlfriend dead in his bed. "At first I thought she might have committed suicide," Matthews said. "But then I saw the rope burns [on her wrists and ankles]. That’s when James said somebody murdered her, and he made me go out."
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