Cairo, Ga.: Informant says Bridges admitted killing his wife and her mother.....
Slimpickins
Thursday, 02-Mar-00 01:34:08
About
James L. Rosica
Home page
Local news
Local sports news
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Suspect said to admit to killings
Jailhouse informer testifies in trial of Roy Bridges.
By JAMES L. ROSICA
Tallahassee Democrat
CAIRO, Ga.
A jailhouse informer testified Wednesday that alleged murderer Roy Bridges
admitted he had killed his wife and mother-in-law in December 1997 and
needed help in creating an alibi.
Ronnie Thomas, who met Bridges in the Decatur County jail last year, said
Bridges also told him he used knives and a slapjack, or short club, to kill
the women, then threw the weapons in the Flint River near Bainbridge.
"He said, 'Ron, I did do these murders and I need to get it straightened
out,' " Thomas said.
Bridges also enlisted him to find a friend who would testify that he saw
Bridges in Alabama the night of the murders, Thomas told jurors. Bridges
told investigators he was on a hunting trip there that weekend.
Bridges, 62, is charged with the murders of his wife, JoAnn Bridges, 64, and
his mother-in-law, Christine Ulmer, 84. The women were clubbed and stabbed
to death in Ulmer's Whigham home. The trial began Tuesday.
JoAnn Bridges was a longtime state worker; she was the personal secretary to
former Juvenile Justice Secretary Calvin Ross when she died. Roy Bridges ran
the family's tree service.
Defense attorneys suggested that Thomas had fabricated the story because
Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents offered to free him from jail so he
could assist the investigation, which he did. It was not clear what Thomas
was charged with when he was jailed with Bridges.
Bridges and Thomas worked out a plot -- with a script and diagram -- for a
friend of Thomas' to say he and Bridges had a fender-bender the night JoAnn
Bridges and Ulmer died, Thomas said. In return, Bridges would pay the man
$7,500.
Once Thomas was released, he visited Bridges in jail while wearing a
concealed tape recorder. The men talked in code, referring to the plan as
"the porch" that Thomas would be building at Bridges' Waverly Road house in
Tallahassee, he said.
District Attorney Brown Moseley played the tape for jurors, but it could not
be heard clearly throughout the courtroom.
Moseley also questioned GBI agent John White, who led a search of Bridges'
home after the killings. White said he confronted Bridges with evidence that
Bridges called a girlfriend on his cellular phone in South Georgia the night
of the slayings, when Bridges said he was in Alabama.
"He said, 'So I have a morality problem; I'm a human being,' " White
testified. " 'You think I'm gonna turn around and do something horrible like
this?' "
White said agents confiscated several items, but "nothing that would put him
at the crime scene."
Defense attorney Clyde Taylor asked White why he didn't consider that a
traveling killer might have jumped off the railroad behind Ulmer's house.
Taylor mentioned that a tracking dog had picked up a scent that led to the
tracks.
"We don't know what that dog was following -- I've seen dogs track to
another female dog," White said. ". . . We didn't have a report of a
perpetrator running back there."
In other testimony, Dr. Anthony Clark, a state forensic pathologist, said
JoAnn Bridges suffered at least five blows to the head and at least six stab
wounds to the chest, including one wound that happened after she died. The
blows likely were caused by a heavy, narrow object, he said.
Clark also used autopsy photos to show how Ulmer's throat was slashed, which
caused several family members to run out of the courtroom.
Taylor asked if the killings were "overkill," the kind that might be
committed by a crazed serial killer. Clark said it was possible.
But Moseley then asked if the killings were similar to domestic violence
that ends in murder. Clark said that also was possible.
The trial resumes today at the Grady County Courthouse and could continue
into next week.
http://www.tdo.com/news/local/0302.loc.trial.htm
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
James L. Rosica covers courts and law enforcement for the Tallahassee
Democrat. Contact him at (850) 599-2304 or at jlro...@taldem.com .
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----