Emotional day at murder trial

ALVA - As the first degree murder trial against Katherine Rutan Pollard went into its eighth day at the Woods County Courthouse Wednesday testimony revolved around statements made by her youngest son concerning his older brother’s disappearance.

In fact, the day began with Justin Daggett, 9, taking the stand himself.

Daggett, who was four when his brother Logan Tucker went missing, testified that he could still remember living in Woodward at that time. (He now lives in Osawatomie, Kan. with his father and stepmother.)

When lead prosecutor Chris Ross asked him about the last time he remembered seeing Tucker, Daggett said it was “when she (Pollard) left him at some house where a man lived.”

He talked about how his mother took his brother, who had not been talking or moving on the ride to the house, and carried him to the house. He said he did not see her go into the house because there were trees in the way.

However, as they drove away Daggett said he saw a man looking through a window of the house.

The boy said he could remember showing the house in 2006 to Monte Clem of the Woodward County Sheriff’s Department and two women, who he could not remember. The two women were Linda Semmel and Christie Castor, who both work for the Department of Human Services in Woodward and became involved with the case surrounding Tucker’s disappearance around July 8, 2002.

Semmel testified Wednesday that Daggett had taken her to the same house in 2002, telling her at the time that it was his “mother’s brother’s house.”

Daggett said he remembered speaking with her, Clem and other investigators then, but could not remember what he told them. He also did not remember talking about a shovel or plastic or his mother’s brother.

Videotapes of two interviews done with Daggett in 2002 were then shown by stipulation to let the jury know what he had said in those early interviews.

Pollard, who dabbed her eyes when Daggett first took the stand, had to wipe some tears away later as she watched the videos. Others in the courtroom also seemed to be affected as they watched the lively four-year-old playing on the tapes and talking about never seeing his brother again.

In the recording of Daggett’s forensic interview on July 15, 2002, the boy becomes upset as the interviewer continues to ask him about Tucker and the last time he saw his brother.

As the interviewer asks him about what his mother was doing with a shovel and plastic, Daggett interrupts saying “I don’t want to tell you this.”

“It hurted me,” Daggett told the interviewer. “You keep hurting my heart”

The other videotape shows an interview between Daggett, Clem and Castor on July 9, 2002.

Both videos show the young boy talking about how his “mother’s brother” took Tucker “far away.” When asked how he knew this, as he had said that he had never seen or met his mother’s brother, Daggett explained that his mother told him.

He also talked about how Tucker was sick on the last morning he saw him. He said it was his mother who told him the older boy was sick.

Also in both tapes, the four-year-old tells how Tucker was taken away because he was bad, noting that one of the last times he saw his brother, Tucker had gotten in trouble for lighting a match.

In testimony given by Ron Parrish, who was an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation when he interviewed Daggett on three separate occasions in August 2002, it was revealed that in one of those interviews the young boy said Pollard even “told him if he wasn’t good, he’d have to go away too.”

Before Parrish testified Wednesday, Defense Attorney Larry Jordan tried once again to get his testimony and audio tape, which were basically verbal notes Parrish made during two of his interviews with Daggett, suppressed. Once again District Judge Ray Dean Linder denied his motion and the jurors were able to hear both Parrish’s testimony and the tapes.

On both tapes Parrish notes Daggett discussed how Tucker was sick on the last day he saw him, which was consistent with the boy’s statements in earlier interviews in July 2002.

On the second audio tape which was made during Parrish’s Aug. 8 interview, the young boy talks about how Pollard put white tape on his brother’s mouth when he was sick.

“My mom put tape on him eyes so he won’t cry,” the young Daggett also said.

Later on the same tape he said “mom buried him.”

In discussing these tapes, both Parrish and Castor, who accompanied Daggett on the FBI interviews and who also testified Wednesday, said Daggett described burying someone as just throwing dirt on them.

Castor said she did not find it unusual that the four-year-old Daggett did not equate being buried with being dead. She said she was present at almost all of his interviews, noting that while he consistently said Tucker was with his mother’s brother, he was also consistent in saying that Tucker had been buried.

She said other aspects of his story, such as seeing his mother getting a shovel and plastic from her boyfriend Michael Pettey’s house and then putting those items in the trunk of her car. Furthermore Daggett consistently said his mother took the shovel out into the fields but never brought back any wildflowers, even though that is what she was supposed to be looking for.

However, the defense made a point of noting how Daggett never said anything different about not going into the field with his mother and brother.

Jordan then asked Castor and Parrish how Daggett could know that Tucker was buried if he never got out of the vehicle to see his mother burying him.

Jordan also noted that on the audio tapes, Parrish was the first one heard to mention Pollard burying Tucker.

Parrish explained though that the tapes were not recordings of the entire conversation, but merely his notes about conversation to be used when he later wrote his report.

“Yes, it’s the first time you hear buried, but I wasn’t the first person to say it,” he said. “Because the entire time we’re doing this, I’m telling Justin that ‘we’re just trying to locate your brother.’ I never indicated to him that he was dead or anything else.”

In fact, Parrish said he and Castor had just been talking to Daggett about the shovel and plastic in his mom’s car and were surprised when he told them that she used the items to bury Tucker.

Pollard was arrested and charged with her oldest son’s murder in February 2006.

Testimony will continue today at 9 a.m. in the Woods County Courthouse in Alva.

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