Accused killer’s wife feared him

Earline Horton is the second person in two days to say 25-year-old Adam Horton was killed by her husband, Christopher Horton, almost seven years ago and then went on a spending spree with the victim’s cash and a credit card.
Tuesday, her half-brother, Jimmy Wright, serving a life sentence after his 2009 conviction for his role, testified Christopher Horton, now 28, stabbed Adam Horton at his 537 Little Pine Lane mobile home in Bayou Vista during a planned robbery. Wright testified in his trial they got about $1,000 in cash and credit card withdrawals from the robbery.
Earline Horton, 43, testified for nearly two hours Wednesday afternoon that she had not told the complete truth to police the first three times she was interviewed about the Sept. 2, 2007, killing. She eventually became truthful with detectives and was being truthful with her testimony in the first-degree murder trial of her husband, she said.
Earline Horton said her husband told her, while she was talking with him and her half-brother, that Horton stabbed and killed his brother.
She was 35 and he was 21 when they were married about a year before the killing, she said.
Robert Fuhrer, the defense attorney, asked her why she had married a man almost 15 years younger than her.
“I loved him with all my heart,” she responded.
Anthony Saleme, the assistant district attorney prosecuting the case, asked her why she had not been truthful from the start.
Pursing her lips and pausing a few seconds, she answered softly, “I was afraid of what Chris would do if I did.” As she began to tear up, she said she finally began truthfully revealing information “when he could no longer get to me.”
Before Horton testified, she was instructed by 16th Judicial District Judge Paul deMay not to talk about anything her husband told her in private. The Louisiana criminal code prohibits a spouse from testifying against another spouse regarding confidential matters, if either spouse objects to it. Earline Horton was allowed to discuss actions and conversations that occurred in the presence of others.
Except for the moment it took for her to identify her husband, Earline Horton looked away from the defendant. Saleme moved to the side of his table furthest from the defense as he questioned her. Two bailiffs stood near her husband during her testimony, but Christopher Horton did not demonstrate visible signs of agitation as he watched her testify.
At least twice, Fuhrer, the defense attorney, told the judge he could not hear her testimony and even Saleme said he could not hear her because she spoke so softly.
Fuhrer attempted to undermine Wright’s testimony Tuesday by getting him to admit he had not told the truth in four of the five times he was interviewed. He got Wright to say he had not been truthful to even his mother for a period of time.
Earline Horton said she was using an unfamiliar credit card, stolen from Adam Horton, to make purchases and ATM withdrawals without looking to see the name on the card or ask her husband where he got it. Saleme said that could cause jurors to question her credibility but she insisted it was the truth.
She said she did not ask what had really happened until she saw a cell phone she recognized as belonging to Adam Horton, who she had been friends with. She described Christopher Horton’s demeanor as “cold” when he told her he stabbed his brother.
Saleme introduced a statement Horton’s cellmate, John Lyons, had allegedly written at Horton’s behest in which he confessed to the stabbing after seeing his wife, brother and Wright engaged in sexual activity together. Lyons said Horton told him the couple had been living separately for at least a couple of days.
Testimony, which Lyons had not heard, had earlier established that the Hortons were not separated at the time of the killing.
Fuhrer cross-examined Lyons who said Horton told him that he and Wright returned to the scene of the killing and put his brother’s body in Adam Horton’s car and torched it. He believed Christopher Horton was telling the truth in that confession, Lyons said.
Then Fuhrer showed Lyons a photo of Adam Horton’s body as police found it lying in a pool of blood in his trailer, not burned in a torched automobile.
“Well, people say all kind of stuff in prison,” Lyons said.
Dr. Susan Garcia, a forensic pathologist and expert witness, gave Fuhrer an answer to a question he posed to detectives Tuesday about the angle of the knife wound that killed Horton.
Horton died from a stab wound that punctured his lung, cut the pulmonary artery and nicked his heart, she said. The one-inch wide wound was inflicted in a downward and left to right trajectory, she said. But even armed with that information, it could not be stated if the stabbing was done by a left-handed or right-handed person, she said.
Carolyn Booker, an expert witness in DNA analysis from the Acadiana Crime Lab in New Iberia, discussed the items that were analyzed for DNA. Nothing put Christopher Horton conclusively at the scene of the killing.
DNA evidence was not found on the knife the prosecution said killed Horton. It was recovered from Wilson’s Landing, near Patterson, where Wright said he threw it in the bayou.
Booker said it is not unusual to have no DNA on the knife since it was submerged in water for some period.
deMay told jurors the testimony would conclude today. Concluding arguments by both attorneys may begin by early afternoon.
Fuhrer suggested in his opening statement that jurors might find his client guilty of manslaughter rather than first- or second-degree murder. This is not a capital case with the possibility of an execution because two separate psychological examinations have ruled Horton to be retarded. The examinations show Horton has an IQ of 64 or 68. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled such executions are unconstitutional.