Dance of Death

by Dale Hudson

  (Author’s note: For the purpose of this book, Brent Poole’s family was contacted, but they chose not to be interviewed.)

  AFTERWORD

  When the South Carolina Court of Appeals reversed John Boyd Frazier’s conviction in 2004 and ordered a new trial, no one doubted the prosecution would have their work cut out for them. This time, Morgan Martin and Tommy Brittain would bring nothing less than perfection to the table. In Frazier’s first trial, the defense team’s efforts had been thwarted by the judge in not allowing them to present videographer Donald Smith and his taped reenactment of conditions and visibility comparable to the night Brent Poole had been murdered. Mark and Donna Hobbs’s eyewitness testimony was the prosecution’s one and only corroboration that a darkly clad Frazier had been trolling the Carolina Winds and walking the beach the night Poole was killed. The defense believed any conscientious jury would be convinced after having viewed Smith’s video reenactment that it would have been totally impossible for the Hobbses to have gotten “a good-enough look” at Frazier to later identify him in a police lineup.

  In addition, Judge Peeples had in Frazier’s first trial allowed certain evidence and testimony that had been critically injurious to his case. Martin and Brittain still believed wholeheartedly the prosecutors had never proven their case against Frazier—that it had been merely one of circumstantial evidence against him and he had been wrongly convicted based on misleading information and fallacious accusations presented to the jurors. Their intent was that Frazier be tried on the direct evidence against him and not from what others had testified about his relationship with Renee Poole. They had painstakingly reviewed the trial transcripts and examined in great detail every bit of evidence and single word of testimony that could have affected the judgment of the jury.

  For this new trial, Martin and Brittain had crafted a more aggressive defense and planned to challenge each piece of evidence and every witness the state had to offer. Frazier’s family and defense team saw it as a good omen that Judge Paula Thomas would run herd over this trial. During Thomas’s seven-year tenure as a circuit court judge, she had presided over many emotionally packed cases, including a couple accused in the death of their twenty-month-old girl and the murder of Horry County Police Department corporal Dennis Lyden. To those who saw the attractive Thomas with her trim figure and soft voice outside the courtroom, she could have been easily mistaken for an elementary-school teacher. But to those who saw her inside the courtroom, it was perfectly clear she was not only capable and had a solid grasp of the judicial system, but was a tough and gutsy lady. From the very beginning of the trial, Thomas demonstrated she wasn’t afraid of the job, or the press, and was bound and determined to see that Frazier would receive a fair and impartial trial.

  Questions related to Renee Poole had already been asked before the trial date: If John Frazier was acquitted, how would this affect her appeal? Would she get a new trial? Would she get a reduced sentence? If she was to be released, would she file for custody for her daughter, Katie? Was she planning on testifying against John in this trial?

  One of the first hurdles for Judge Thomas to overcome in the trial was to find a panel of jurors that was not already familiar with Renee’s or John’s previous trial. Fortunately, Horry County consists of a transient population, always coming and going, and a lot of new faces had appeared on the scene since Brent’s murder in 1998, Renee’s trial in 2001 and John’s trial in 2002; a jury was seated the first day.

  Secondly, how would Thomas handle evidence and testimony against Frazier? Even though a lot of testimony in Frazier’s first trial had already been thrown out, Thomas would preview outside of the jurors’ [hearing] testimony that was questionable and decide then and there if that information was admissible. Unless Renee chose to testify against her former lover, even her words could not be used against him.

  Lastly, if the jury found Frazier to be guilty, would Thomas impose the same sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, or would she consider reducing it in favor of a term sentence with a parole date? The family of Brent Poole prayed his conviction would be upheld and he would return to prison for the rest of his natural life.

  On the first day of trial, May 23, 2005, John Frazier walked into the courtroom with his entourage. Prison had not been nearly as kind to him as it had been to Renee Poole. Dressed in a dark suit, he was totally bald and looked significantly older and heavier than he had in his first trial. Someone in the gallery later remarked John looked like Uncle Fester from the Addams Family. Gone was the cockiness and the bantam rooster swagger he had first presented at his extradition hearing in North Carolina nearly seven years ago. John’s mother, Jane Lovett, said he had done a lot of soul-searching and Bible study since his conviction and a gentle, kind and humble spirit now prevailed within him. His lawyers agreed and hoped the jurors would notice that. In fact, they were so convinced in the changes John had made in his life that there was talk of him testifying on his own behalf.

  John’s defense team believed there was a lot of important information the jurors needed to know about him. Particularly damaging in his first trial was that jurors had mistakenly confused “his sweating condition” as further evidence of guilt. Morgan Martin would remind these jurors that this was nothing more than a prevalent, high body temperature John had had since birth that caused him to sweat profusely. “Even on the coldest days, he still sweats,” Martin assured them.

  Martin also wanted jurors to know up front that in 1998 John Boyd Frazier was a single, youthful and potent male. He admitted John hadn’t lived the kind of life his family was proud of, and his unbridled lust for the nightlife and exotic dancers had gotten him into a quandary more than a time or two. Granted, it was a lifestyle frowned upon by many persons positioned near the top of the food chain, but, nevertheless, a common and acceptable standard among other circles of society. But should John be penalized for having lived the life of a single man when he was just one of countless others—many of whom would testify in this case—that had succumbed to the calling of the night?

  To help bolster their arguments in the courtroom, John’s defense team relied on an advanced collection of computerized equipment. One quick click of the mouse and the miracle of technology changed the courtroom into a mini-theater. Relevant information could be booted up at command and this dazzling stage presentation was, no doubt, impressive to the jurors. They laughed along with Martin when he lightheartedly poked fun at the prosecution for hand-pasting their little “stickies” up on poster board.

  On the serious side, the defense asked Judge Thomas not to allow the prosecution’s poster board to be carried back to the jury room. They believed it represented a summary of the prosecution’s argument. Deputy solicitor Fran Humphries countered, “It wasn’t a summary, but a timeline to help jurors keep information organized.”

  The prosecution started out flat. This was their third time to argue the case before a jury and their scripts were beginning to lose their luster, sounding more like a high-school Saturday-matinee production of Our Town. Hembree and Humphries looked tired and frustrated at having to jump through all the endless legal hoops. Some of their original witnesses were not available for trial, due to sickness or unavailability, while others had rewritten their lines and/or moved over to the defense.

  Morgan Martin and Tommy Brittain were flawless in the first few days of court. They were on top of their game. The momentum of the legal sport quickly shifted to their side of the courtroom. Going after every witness with a cavalry charge, they shrewdly asked questions that had never been asked before, then demanded answers.

  During John’s first trial, his good friend Kayle Schettler had made a strong witness for the prosecution. Early in the investigation, Myrtle Beach detectives had firmly convinced Schettler that John had murdered Brent Poole. And because John had driven his car the night of the murder, he had implicated him in the case. Rightly so, Schettler was pissed at John for involving him in his trouble
s and mirrored that outlook.

  But after five years of reflection, Schettler’s view had changed. When asked by Morgan Martin if he now thought John had driven his car to the beach, he flatly replied, “No, I don’t.” His answer hung in the courtroom.

  Schettler added that his car had two bald tires and he wouldn’t have risked driving it to the beach. He also said when he got his car back from John, it was clean—the front of his car lacked the normal evidence of squashed bugs, which are so prevalent to the Carolinas. No bug juice. Mosquito wings. Or beetle guts. And that seemed odd to Schettler, who had made a similar trip from Winston-Salem to Myrtle Beach shortly after John had been arrested and his front fender was covered in bug splatter.

  The defense team made mincemeat out of another key prosecution witness, Bruce Wolford. In Renee’s trial, her lawyers pointed at Wolford, saying he, too, had had an adulterous relationship with Renee. Couldn’t he also be considered a suspect in Brent’s murder? Wolford was not called to testify in Renee’s trial, but provided very damaging information against John in his trial. Wearing tennis shoes, blue jeans, and a green pullover cotton shirt, falling loosely outside his jeans, he sat at the back of the courtroom looking more like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo than a star witness. Strutting around the courthouse with the distinctive air of a prize stud that breeds well in captivity, he would return to his seat after court recess, then immediately focus on the female reporter operating a television camera in the back corner. When he finally made it to the witness stand, he was so quiet and reserved, the attorneys had to remind him several times, for the sake of the court, to speak up. Only when Martin asked him about his affair with Renee did he then perk up, explaining in great detail how it all began and took place.

  “Mr. Wolford, didn’t you make some type of memoriam to remember this occasion with Mrs. Poole?” Martin asked bluntly.

  Wolford smiled, then admitted he had made a tape of him and Renee having sex. His face brightened as he revealed the slippery truth about his relationship with Renee and the other women he had known in that same time period. He sat up straight and pulled in close to the microphone, acknowledging there had been other women in his life besides Renee that he had pleasured for the benefit of him and his ex-wife. He said his ex-wife had also been an exotic dancer at the Silver Fox Gentleman’s Club and had been friends with Renee. The purpose for taping his and Renee’s affair was because his ex had wanted to watch them have sex, but didn’t want to be there. That was not out of the ordinary, for he had brought a lot of women home for that very reason.

  Bruce was coming in loud and clear. Short of tongue, Martin asked Wolford, “Would it be fair to say, for lack of a better word, that you and your wife were swingers?”

  “Well, we had an open relationship,” Wolford said proudly. He looked around the courtroom as if he were the “American Gigolo” expecting applause from a nighttime talk-show audience, then added, “That would describe it best.” He never realized he was the only one amused by his sex tales.

  Martin continued to build his case that Wolford was not only unscrupulous, but wouldn’t think twice about lying in court. Using Wolford’s own testimony about dates, times and events, he compared those against evidence submitted in court and forced Wolford to admit he had not told the truth on more than one occasion. Wolford was caught by surprise at having been exposed in the courtroom.

  It was apparent throughout the trial, John’s lawyers were putting on one hell of a floor show. Ripping witnesses apart. Tearing through testimonies. Keeping damaging information away from the jurors. By midweek, they had quieted the prosecution’s side and even had the detectives and other law enforcement officers who were there to testify squirming in their seats. John was feeling very good, laughing and joking with family members and friends.

  Winston-Salem police officer Darrell Mills, who had first approached John’s house during the early-morning hours of June 10, 1998, to see if he was home, admitted he had made a vital mistake in not checking the hood of the parked car to see if it had been driven.

  “All you had to do was ask,” Martin suggested, then got Mills to agree. “If you would have done that, found out whether or not the hood of the engine was hot or cold, then we might not have been here today in this courtroom.”

  The confidence level was high in John’s family and his supporters, and at the end of the day, they walked with a lighter step. Martin and Brittain had been merciless and showed no signs of letting up. Even before Mark and Donna Hobbs took the stand, they sought to have their testimonies discarded. After John’s trial, Bill and Agnes Poole had contacted the solicitor’s office. They felt so moved by the Hobbses’ courage and conviction to testify that they insisted on giving them each a gift of $10,000.

  John’s lawyers exhausted all arguments to strike the Hobbses’ testimony and the photographic lineup. The Hobbses were an imminent and present threat to their client’s acquittal. If they could keep their testimony out of court—the only witnesses who could put him at the crime scene—then he would stand a good chance of walking out a free man.

  But after hearing the Hobbses’ testimonies and lawyers’ arguments outside of the jury, Judge Thomas ruled no foul had been committed. The Pooles had given the money in good faith and with no intention of malice, and long before they knew John’s case would be overturned.

  “I don’t need the money,” a red-faced Mark Hobbs told the judge. “It’s still in my bank account if you want to have it back. My wife and I didn’t want to take it, but it was something the Pooles insisted that we do.”

  As in previous trials, Mark and Donna Hobbs were unshakable in that they had seen John Frazier at the hotel and on the beach the night Brent Poole was murdered. The defense went after them, time and time again, shaking their heads and murmuring to the jury, “And how can you be so sure?”

  Donna Hobbs testified that even seeing John again in the courtroom convinced her she was right. “When I first saw him, he made a certain move and I thought, ‘Oh, no. He shouldn’t have done that. It was the same move he made on the beach that night.’”

  After the prosecution rested its case, the defense opened with the testimony of videographer Donald Smith. The long-awaited video, by Smith’s video production company, Lucky Dog, produced for the first trial and two years after Poole’s murder, raised a lot of concerns about whether the Hobbses could have seen John clearly enough that night to recall his face in the photographic lineup.

  John’s lawyers had also secured the services of university professors, Brian Cutler and Elizabeth Loftus, to explain mistaken eyewitness identification and memory selection. It all sounded plausible, but was the jury buying it? Even if they didn’t, the defense maintained that the Hobbes’ identification of John still didn’t put him at the crime scene. If indeed they had seen him at the hotel, Martin postured, he was still some two blocks away from the crime scene.

  A critical point in the trial arose when the defense called John’s sister, Christine Micholatti, and his former roommate and exotic dancer, Sharon Haymaker, to testify that Renee Poole didn’t mean anything to him. Both women insisted it wasn’t a big deal to John for a girl to move in with him, have sex, then move out. John would always move on as if nothing had happened.

  But on cross-examination of Micholatti, Hembree reminded her about John’s Day-Timer, garnered in a search at his mother’s beach home in February 1999. Listed among its pages were significant dates, such as the beginning of his and Renee’s relationship, the first time they had sex, the day Renee moved in, and Katie’s birthday. The last entry was written the day of, or the day, Renee moved out. The note read: “FUCK YOU RENEE!!”

  Hembree continued to paint a clear picture of how upset John was when Renee moved back in with her husband. He wanted the jurors to see that John did care for her and believed he would have a future with her. Brent’s sister, Dee Mishler, was called as a rebuttal witness and revealed a phone conversation she had with John.

  “It was Mother’s Da
y,” Mishler began. “Brent called me and said Renee was moving back home. He asked me if I would help him clean the house and get everything ready for her arrival.... He had grilled steaks and prepared a surprise dinner, but Renee never showed. And when it got very late that night, I called her on her cell phone. In a few minutes, John called me back.”

  Mishler stated John was very upset and used vulgar language.

  “I had never been called any of those names before. He used the ‘F’ word, and told me my brother and family was ‘f-ing’ crazy. Then it was G.D. this and G.D. that, and Renee was never coming home.... He was really angry.”

  John was collapsing under the pressure. Up until Mishler’s testimony, he had done very well holding his emotions. But as she walked away from the witness stand and past him, he quipped in a voice loud enough for her to hear, “Thanks for lying.” Mishler wheeled around, then leaned into Hembree and reported John’s taunt. Hembree jumped up and demanded that John be reprimanded.

  The jurors believed they were now seeing a side of John Frazier that had been cleverly disguised in court. In the eleventh hour, Mishler’s testimony confirmed what they had suspected all along. Her words were the last words spoken from witnesses in reference to John’s character and, no doubt, would carry a lot of weight in their final decision.

  Still, there was hope for an acquittal.

  Renee’s parents, Jack and Marie Summey, had been present every day of the trial, sitting in the row behind John’s family. After Martin announced, “The defense rests,” Jack leaned over to Marie and whispered, “If our daughter had gotten that type of defense from her lawyers, she wouldn’t be sitting in prison today.”

  As Fran Humphries began his closing argument, it looked as if the case could go either way. Humphries’ job was to be brief and set the jury up for the final act—Hembree’s closing arguments. He looked a little sheepish, but was his usual calm and methodical self.