Prosecutors don’t have any physical evidence that puts Eddie Robbins inside the north Fayette home where two of his friends’ bodies were found in May 2003.

But Robbins’s reaction during an interview weeks after the killings may (have done/do) exactly that. Robbins nodded “slightly” when asked if David Mangham had pulled a gun on him, and the killings were done in self defense, said Lt. Col. Bruce Jordan of the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office.

That crucial testimony in the murder trial against Robbins was called into question with testimony from the former prosecutor assigned to the case. Dan Hiatt, who was then the chief assistant district attorney, said he hadn’t heard about the head-nod evidence.

“No, I never heard that before,” Hiatt said Monday morning.

That counters Jordan’s assertion Friday that he mentioned it to Hiatt “at least ten times” during the course of the investigation. Jordan said he even mentioned the incident in his grand jury testimony and in his report on the case.

Hiatt said he didn’t recall having seen the sheriff’s department’s report on the case, but he thinks he could recall all the “essential” facts in the case.

No one else witnessed the initial head nod, Jordan said. A Clayton County policeman assigned to guard Robbins testified Monday morning that he didn’t overhear that interview either, or he would have written about it in his report of his actions that day.

Mangham’s gun was found about two feet from his outstretched hand after the killings occurred at his home in the Princeton Chase subdivision off Ga. Highway 314 north, Jordan said. He and Francis Michael Fowler of Ellenwood had been shot twice in the head, and ballistics tests showed they were shot with the same weapon, a Colt .45 style gun that was never found by deputies.

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