Maxwell convicted in Pugh murders
Malificynt
Maxwell convicted in Pugh murders
Carol Robinson
News staff writer
5/14/98
Birmingham?, Alabama
A Jefferson County jury deliberated only 40 minutes Wednesday evening before
convicting Michael Craig Maxwell of capital murder in last summer's brutal
slayings of Harold Pugh and his 11-year-old son, Joey.
The guilty verdict came after the jury listened to an hourlong tape of Maxwell,
26, describing in detail how he and another man shot the father and son and
then dumped their bodies into Cane Creek. The Pughs were on a fishing trip when
they were murdered on July 20, 1997.
They were killed, Maxwell said, because he and four other northwest Alabama men
needed a getaway car for a bank robbery.
Maxwell's face flushed and he swallowed hard, but he showed no other emotion
when the verdict was announced. The jury is to return today to begin the
sentencing phase of the trial.
The trial was moved from Colbert County to Jefferson County because of intense
publicity in the Muscle Shoals area.
After lunch Wednesday, Colbert County District Attorney Gary Alverson called
FBI
Special Agent Herb Smith to the stand and they played the taped confession. The
prosecution rested its case after the tape and defense attorney B.T. Gardner
Jr. didn't call any witnesses.
In his confession, taken by Smith and other agents at 2:58 a.m. on Aug. 22,
Maxwell, without a lawyer present, explained how he and others joined to try
robbing banks to make extra money.
It began, Maxwell said, when group leader Mark David Moore enlisted him as the
first member of a team he was putting together. Moore soon enlisted the others:
Kino Graham, Thomas Dale Ferguson and Donald Ray Risley, Maxwell said.
Ferguson faces capital murder charges and his trial is set for June in Mobile.
Moore and Graham each face two counts of murder and their trial is set for
August in Birmingham. Risley entered a plea and agreed to testify.
This is Maxwell's account from the tape:
The group met at a restaurant and hatched a plot. Moore sold some stock and
borrowed money to buy handheld radios, rifles, cars, uniforms and other things
they would need for holdups.
Maxwell and Ferguson had to find a getaway car and on July 20 went to the boat
landing in Cane Creek, where they staked out Pugh's pickup truck and waited for
him and his son to return from fishing. Maxwell and Ferguson forced Pugh back
into the boat and began to look for a place to get rid of him and his son.
''We were going down the river. It seems like I'm traveling forever,'' Maxwell
said. ''It was getting dark. Really, I was just buying time, hoping I could
find a spot.''
At one point, Joey looked up at Maxwell and said, ''Can I ask you a question?''
Maxwell said no, and Joey fell silent again.
Finally they came to an embankment that was too steep to climb, Maxwell said.
That's when they stopped the boat. Ferguson shot Pugh and Maxwell shot Joey.
''I thought he (Pugh) might still be alive, so I shot him again,'' Maxwell
said. He thought Joey might still be alive, so he shot him again, too.
Agents asked him what he did next.
''I pushed the bodies over into the water,'' he said.
Maxwell said in his confession that Moore ordered them, ''if they see your
face, you got to kill them.''
They met at 6 a.m. the next morning to plan the bank robbery, but Graham didn't
show. The rest of the gang used Pugh's pickup truck to rob a bank in Belmont,
Miss., that day. The truck was found burning in the woods just outside of
Belmont shortly after the robbery.
The heist yielded $40,000, which the group divided equally except for Graham,
who only received $1,000.
At the end of the tape, agents asked Maxwell if he had anything else to say.
He tried to explain why he stayed with Moore's group.
''Only that we have all been threatened (that) the only way out is one of two
ways,'' Maxwell said. ''Two ways out. One was to die in battle and the other
way is a bullet in my head.''
PamaNBama
Just in case anyone is interested, the jury recommended DEATH for Maxwell. I
just hope it doesn't take them 15 years to carry out the sentence.