Charged with the July 2, 2021, double-homicide of Sue Faris and Matthew Blakeley, the trial of Cadiz man Landon Stinson resumed Monday morning in Trigg County Circuit Court.
And it was his mother, Rhonda Neighbors, providing key testimony for both the prosecution and defense.
Commonwealth’s Attorney Carrie Ovey-Wiggins noted Neighbors was in a “tough position” — torn between the love of a son, and the deaths of Faris and Blakeley — but that questions had to be asked.
Needing a refresher, the Commonwealth played back more than 20 minutes of those first phone conversations between Neighbors and Kentucky State Police. The jury was not present.
Neighbors then told the jury she first learned of her relatives deaths that early July 3, 2021, morning, in a phone call from her father: Donnie Allen. She said she “broke down,” before she and her husband, Mike, gathered up and went to Cerulean Road.
Neighbors said several family members were already on the scene when she and her husband arrived, but confirmed Stinson was not one of them. She visited both Cerulean Road and Stinson’s Julien Road residence that day, and tried to contact her son repeatedly — without luck.
It wasn’t until July 4, 2021, she said, that Stinson called her, and the two spoke “two or three times” and at different times. She confirmed it was from an unrecognized number, and Neighbors reported these conversations to Kentucky State Police and Detective David Dick.
From those conversations, Neighbors relayed a lot to KSP — and, now, to the jury. She said Stinson told her that, on July 2, 2021, Blakeley woke him up at his Julien Road apartment, and that he went to Sue’s later in the day — around 5:30-6 PM to “pick up scales.” Stinson, she said, told Blakeley he was “going to California,” but admitted she didn’t tell Stinson “the truth” in those calls when he kept asking “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” as she cried to him.
That truth: that Faris and Blakeley were dead.
She also noted that Stinson reported a “sick feeling” in his stomach, but that he’d made it to California, “looking for a fresh start.”
Furthermore, Neighbors noted that she knew Stinson had used drugs in the past, but hadn’t observed him maintain “abusive, physical” behavior with Faris and Blakeley, claiming Faris “was like a second mother,” and Blakeley was “like a brother.” And with her daughter and Stinson’s sister, Katelynn Schiro, the trio were “like Sue’s grandchildren” and “The Three Musketeers.”
Several members of the family, seated near the Commonwealth, wept as Neighbors spoke. And in one moment, Neighbors mouthed to Stinson, “I love you.”
Neighbors told defense attorney Bill Deatherage that Stinson had been “argumentative” and “disagreeable” at different times, particularly through drug usage, but that he did not have a history of violence. She also told Deatherage that she, Stinson and Schiro had lived with Faris before, however, she told Ovey-Wiggins that had been through some “teenage years,” and that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Stinson, Blakeley and Faris consistently interact.
She did say that Stinson and Blakeley hung out “almost daily,” and that Stinson had lived “off and on” at the Faris home during a four-year span before shifting to his Julien Road apartment.
In a July 3, 2021, initial interview with Detective Dick and KSP, Neighbors did say two critical statements.
Detective Dick was also recalled to the stand, and re-confirmed that of the two Smith & Wesson boxes recovered at Stinson’s Julien Road apartment, the one with the certificate and test-fired casing had been reported stolen by the Hopkinsville Police Department in July 2016. A search inside the apartment, the attic and canines near the residence did not locate either firearm.
KSP forensics analyst Lawrence Pilcher told the court that — based on database research and analysis of lanes and grooves — the bullets and shell casings found at Sue’s home could “mostly” be linked to a semi-automatic 9mm Smith & Wesson.
Monday actually began with a considerable conflict between the Commonwealth and defense. Ovey-Wiggins has subpoenaed Christian County’s Fenelon Peacher — the alleged drug dealer who had been contacted by Blakeley and Stinson the first week of July 2021 in order to obtain marijuana and cocaine.
While the cocaine wasn’t acquired, the marijuana was, and this transaction is relatively central to those July 3 actions. Deatherage entered that Peacher deserved a public defender and consultation, because statute of limitations hadn’t passed and he could incriminate himself in a potentially larger investigation.
The trial continues this afternoon.
