Wednesday, June 5, 2002
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Wednesday, June 5, 2002 |
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Defense argues somebody else killed her By JOHN MUNFORD
During the murder of a Clayton County man last year, one suspect confessed to the other that he was responsible for killing Beverley Watson, according to the defense attorney representing her husband, Jim, who stands accused of murdering her. During pretrial motions Friday, Lee Sexton said a suspect currently jailed for the November Clayton murder told police in January that his codefendant admitted to killing Mrs. Watson. But prosecutors say the murder suspect's account is questionable because he didn't give police that information in his first account of how the elderly man was killed. The suspect, James Stewart Odom, told a detective with the Clayton County Police Department that during the elderly man's killing the codefendant told him "Don't worry, I've killed before. Do you remember the Riverdale police officer's wife that was missing? I buried her in the woods." Assistant District Attorney Sheila Ross said Odom may be trying to secure a plea bargain with that story to avoid murder charges. She also said Beverley Watson's remains weren't buried when they were discovered in 1999, over two years after her disappearance. "We know it's unreliable," Ross said of the story, noting that in his first conversation with Clayton police about the elderly man's murder, Odom didn't reveal that information. Sexton also wants to introduce evidence during the trial that the Fayette County Sheriff's Department failed to properly follow up on a suspicious van that reportedly was in the Watson's neighborhood the night Beverley Watson disappeared. Sexton said the same night Beverley Watson disappeared, the Watsons' next door neighbor reported a suspicious van in the area. That neighbor followed the van and took its license plate number, passing the information on to police, but the lead wasn't checked out, Sexton claimed. As it turns out, the license plate came back registered to a man who was "apparently a serial stalker," Sexton said. That man was finally arrested on peeping tom charges at a later date, Sexton added. Prosecutors alleged that it was determined that information was not connected to Beverley Watson's disappearance. Detectives were supposedly also told by two other witnesses that they had seen Beverley Watson "four days after she allegedly disappeared," Sexton said.
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