Published: May 02, 2006 10:39 am      

Defense raises compelling questions

CHICKASHA — The case for the defense in State vs. Steven Wilson began on Thursday, Nov. 18, 1982. As defense attorney Ken Johnston had already given his opening statement, the defense’s half of the trial began with testimony. The defense was anxious to discredit the prosecution’s major points and prove the innocence of Steve Wilson in the murder of his 11-year-old stepdaughter, Audra Matheny.

In their defense of Wilson, defense attorneys Ken Johnston and Scott Tack brought forward a physician, Wilson’s relatives and two photographers. Several witnesses who testified earlier in the trial were recalled to clarify certain points of testimony.



Judy Morgan

First up was Judy Morgan, a professional photographer from Marlow. In July, Ken Johnston had provided Morgan with negatives from the Tuttle Police Department. She reprinted and enlarged several photographs, including pictures of Audra Matheny’s bedroom window. When Morgan enlarged the photographs from the police, she detected a hole in the window screen.

Morgan testified that after examining the photographs, she could tell the hole was made from the outside.

“You can tell that the wire is bent to the inside,” she said. “Your color is brighter looking through the hole.” She said that she could tell it wasn’t glare since she had enlarged two photographs showing the window from different angles, and the hole remained in the same place. She said that the hole didn’t look big in the photographs, but that was due to the camera not being focused on the window when the photo was taken.

Morgan said that on July 31, 1982, she accompanied Ken Johnston to the Wilson home to take additional photographs. She said that she found the window easily, and that the hole was the same as it had been in the photos she had enlarged earlier. Morgan said that the hole had been repaired when she went to the home, but she was able to measure it, using her hand, and estimated it to be about four inches across.

Johnston also asked Morgan about the screen itself, and she said that it a type with tabs on the inside of the screen. To open the screen, a person would need to only pull on the tabs.

On cross, Tony Burns focused on Morgan’s training and education in photography. He questioned how she could know the hole was the same more than two months after Audra was killed. He also questioned her ability to take crime scene photographs, asking why she did not put a known object in the pictures of the hole in the screen, for size comparison.

“Do you have now or have you ever had, ma’am, the training to know to put a known object within a photograph that you are going to photograph so you know the dimensions of that object and can be able to use those dimensions to compare what you are actually wanting to photograph - in this case, the hole in the screen?” Burns asked. “Have you ever had the training to know to do that, ma’am?”

Morgan replied that she had that training.

“Well, why didn’t you do it?” he asked.

“I didn’t think it was necessary,” she said.

“You didn’t think it was necessary, but you were coming in to testify to a screen 80 days later after little girl was raped in that room,” Burns said. “You didn’t think it was necessary to e able to tell the jury how big the hole actually was; is that right?”

Morgan said that she knew how big the hole was. She hadn’t measured it, but she examined it.

“I looked at it,” she said. “I’m very close at - measuring, yes.”

“Well, you just started to say guessing, ma’am,” Burns said. “You didn’t measure. You come in here as an expert to preserve the appearance of that screen and yet you didn’t measure anything so the jury could know an accurate measurement of any kind, did you?”

Morgan told Burns that she assumed the jury would believe she knew what four inches was.

On redirect, Johnston asked Morgan about the towel on the floor of Audra’s room, and asked her about the color. She said that the color was bad on the picture, and thought the towel color was probably gold or yellow. The towel, which appeared green in the photographs, was a source of contention during the trial. The prosecution said it was a different towel than the yellow towel found with a single sperm cell inside, and the defense believed it could be the same towel. The prosecution said the yellow towel was found in Steven Wilson’s bedroom.

Burns asked about the towel as well, on recross. He looked at the distorted color photograph, and asked Morgan if she could say under oath what the true colors were in the photograph. She said she could, and indicated that the afghan or blanket was yellow, and that the pillow and towel were both yellow to gold in nature.

“I can’t tell you exactly what shade,” she said. Burns told her that another picture showed the afghan to be yellow and white, but she said it appeared to be only a yellow portion in the distorted color photograph.



David L. Trent

Dr. David L. Trent was a general surgeon in Oklahoma City at the time of Steven Wilson’s trial at the Grady County Courthouse.

Trent examined Wilson on Oct. 23, 1982, at Trent’s office in Oklahoma City. Trent was provided with medical records that showed he had a vasectomy, a surgery performed for a male sterilization, in December 1977. Trent also examined a semen sample from Wilson.

Wilson was in a room with the door ajar while he obtained the sample, then passed it to Trent, who testified that he took it about 10 steps to the adjacent library, where it was examined under the microscope.

“I looked at the entire field and found no identifiable sperm,” Trent said.

“Based on your examination of Steve Wilson’s record, medical record, based on the examination and the case history that you received from him about the - about the time that he’s been married after the vasectomy, and also the sperm count that you ran on him yourself, do you have a medical opinion as to whether it could have been possible for Steve Wilson to ejaculate a sperm in May of 1982?” Johnston asked.

“In my opinion and to the best of my ability in view of the records at hand and seminal fluid analysis, it would not be possible for Steve to produce sperm,” Trent said.

On cross, Tony Burns pressed Trent, asking him to say whether or not there were sperm present or not. Trent would only say that he saw no sperm.



Glenn Wilson

Steven Wilson’s father, Glen Wilson, was called to the stand after Dr. Trent. After talking about his family and history, Johnston asked Glen Wilson about Steve Wilson’s phone bill, which was paid for by his parents. Glen Wilson had a phone bill with him that showed that he last talked to Steve Wilson on the night Audra was killed, at about 9:40 p.m. He didn’t hear Audra specifically, he said, but heard the children in the background.



Friday, Nov. 19

Court ended on Thursday with the testimony of Glenn Wilson. The next day, defense attorney Ken Johnston continued in the same line by calling Steven Wilson’s cousin, Bruce Hayes, and Hayes’ wife, Diana.



Bruce Hayes

Bruce Hayes and Steven Wilson were first cousins, and Hayes was living in Oklahoma City at the time of Audra’s death. When the Wilsons first moved to Oklahoma, in August 1981, they stayed with the Hayes family until they found their home in Tuttle. In his observations of Wilson, Hayes testified that he thought Wilson was a good father and loved the children.

The last time Hayes saw Audra alive was the Saturday before her death.

“Steven [Wilson] had called earlier in the week and suggested that we take all the children to the zoo and that he wanted to take them out and show them a good time, and that Linda wasn’t there and he wanted the families to ge together and have fun,” Hayes said. “And so we all went to the zoo, Oklahoma City Zoo, and spent most of the day.

Wilson, along with Audra and Sean, had arrived at the Hayes house at about 10 a.m., Hayes said, and they stayed at the zoo for several hours.

“My sister worked there, so we had passes to go and ride everything, and it was all free, so we walked around and we ate and we took a boat ride and train ride,” Hayes testified. “We took in everything.”

Hayes said that one dark spot was when Audra got a little ill, more than half way through the day.

“We took a boat ride and she was off by herself and kind of had her head down, and we asked her what was wrong, and she said she thought the boat ride was making her nauseated and dizzy,” Hayes recalled. “And after we got off the boat, then we suggested food, you know, eating, and she popped right back out of it and didn’t give any more difficulty other than, you know, a lot dust blowing.”

Hayes said they left the zoo at about 3:30 p.m., then picked up fried chicken and took it back to the Hayes residence for dinner. Wilson and the children left that night after 11 p.m.

Hayes also testified as to events after Wilson’s arrest. He said that he tried to contact Wilson at the jail, but when he called, it was after 4 p.m. He was told that visiting hours at the jail were only from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m. on Tuesdays.

Johnston asked Hayes about Audra’s mother, Linda Wilson, and what she did after arriving back in Oklahoma City from her trip to California. Hayes said that Linda Wilson stayed with the Hughes family when she returned, and that he and his wife drove her to Louisiana for Audra’s funeral.

“She couldn’t get a flight to Louisiana, and with her emotional state, and without sleep, I told her that I wouldn’t let her go there by herself, that I would drive her,” Hayes said.

Johnston’s final direct questions for Hayes were about the screen in Audra’s room. Johnston had met Hayes at the house on May 19, six days after Audra died.

Hayes told Johnston that he had seen the screen with the tear in it, and that the hole appeared to be big enough for him to stick his hand through.



Diana Hayes

Diana Hayes, the wife of Bruce Hayes, was the next witness. She was one of the first people to talk to Wilson after Audra’s death. She testified that Wilson called her at 7:15 a.m. the morning the death was reported, and asked her to come to the house because Audra was dead.

Diana Hayes said she arrived around 8:30 a.m., and was met by Tuttle Police officer Mike Anderson, who was outside the house. Anderson told Hayes that Audra had apparently died of natural causes. Audra’s body had already been removed from the house.

“Mr. Anderson and I both went inside and Steve was sitting on the couch with Sean in his lap, and I said very little,” she said. “I just went over and sat down beside him.”

She tried to be a comfort in the house, and fixed breakfast for Sean and cleaned up the kitchen. She looked around the house, but found it was rather clean considering how long Audra’s mother had been away. She went in to Audra’s room and saw that the sheets were gone, and she put the cover and pillow back on the bed and picked up a few things.

“I felt like there would be people coming to the home and I knew that I would want it picked up and so I did go around the house,” she said. “I did straighten some - a few things in Audra’s room like her bed, and I did clean up the kitchen. I did pick up some things in Sean’s room, and I really didn’t go back into the master bedroom to clean.”

She testified that neither she nor Wilson were ever told by the police to not clean the house. Several times during the cleaning process, she said, they would sit down and talk.

“There were several periods that we did just kind of sit in the living room together, although Sean, Steven’s son, who is five, he was present the whole time, and although he really wasn’t aware of what had happened, he did for some reason - he wanted to be close to Steve,” Diana Hayes said. “Of course, he always did, but we had very little opportunity to say a whole lot to each other without Sean present, but at one point Steve did say to me, he said, ‘I just really don’t know if I am going to be able to handle this.’ He said, ‘Everybody always expects me to be tough and strong and a macho-type man,’ and he said, ‘I am really not that way. And I just don’t know if I can take it.’ And he did break down and cry, and it wasn’t for a long period of time. He didn’t really sob, but yes, he was upset, very definitely.”



The defense rests

After the testimonies of Bruce and Diana Hayes, the defense rested. The state was ready, and brought out several rebuttal witnesses. All three would testify regarding the hole in the screen in Audra’s bedroom window.



Carl Sikes

First up was Carl Sikes, a Chickasha photographer, who had been in business since 1947. Sikes testified that he could “absolutely not” identify the colors in the distorted color photograph that had been examined by Judy Morgan the day before.

“This photograph has been heavily fogged by a light other than the light that was used to go through the lens, In other words, it’s been fogged and streaked fogging coming into the film other than what went through the lens to take the photograph originally,” Sikes said. “There is no way of knowing the exact color of that light, therefore, the color of the light that fogged this would grossly distort any color that would have been placed there by the lens. In other words, this light is yellow. The light you read by at home is yellow. If you happen to read by a florescent light, it’s green. Now, you don’t recognize it as that, but if you photograph it you will find out that’s what it is.”

Sikes also testified that when Morgan’s photographs of the screen were taken, using a different lens, it would give a different perspective of the hole.



Linda Wilson

Linda Wilson was recalled to the stand to tell what she knew of the hole in the screen. She testified that when she and her husband first bought the house, she noticed a small hole in the screen, and she pointed it out to Steve Wilson.

“When we were looking at the house I mentioned it to him, I said, ‘Look, there’s a little hole.’ I said, ‘Maybe Mr. Meyer will fix it. We’ll ask him.’ But we never did even mention it to him,” she said.

She told the jury that she remembered the hole very well, and that it was about as big as the end of her little finger.

“It wasn’t very big at all,” she said. “It was just a little tiny hole.”



Dennis Meyer

Dennis Meyer, a professional home builder, was the last person to give testimony before the jury in State vs. Steven Wilson. In October 1981, Meyer sold the Wilsons their home on a one-year lease with an option to buy. He identified the home through photographs.

“That’s a house that I built in the early spring of ‘81,” he said. “We finished it in the early summer of ‘81, and we tried to sell it during that summer and we were unsuccessful because of high interest rates in 1981, and then sold it to Steve and Linda Wilson in October of that year on a lease option.

Meyer testified that during the summer, when he was still trying to sell the home, he was out one day, mowing the grass.

“Immediately around the house about maybe 20 feet around the house I would just go out there with my Snapper riding lawnmower and mow the grass and weeds, and one day I was mowing on this side of the house and I always try to keep the blade pointed away from the house, but this particular time I thought I was far enough away from it, and I hit a rock and it went through the window.”

Meyer said he didn’t realize he’d done it, initially.

“It sounded like maybe a rock hitting a piece of plywood, and I went ahead and mowed, and then when I finished I looked at that window and much to my chagrin I had busted the bottom sash of the thermal pane window and tore the screen,” he recalled. “The rock was in the house on the new carpet, and I thought, ‘Boy, this is now a very wise thing to do,’ you know. And so I fixed the bottom sash of that thermal pane, but the hole in the screen wasn’t significant, and I just frankly forgot about it and didn’t even fit it and just forgot about it.”

Meyer estimated that the rock was about twice the size of a large shooting marble, and the hole was about the size of a half of a dollar.



State’s closing argument

Tony Burns began his closing statement by thanking everyone for devoting themselves so much to the case. He asked the jury to rely upon their recollection of the trial as they deliberated Wilson’s fate.

Burns brought up the discrepancies in times that Wilson gave, starting with his waking up at around 6:15 a.m., even though his alarm was set for 7:15 a.m. and Audra’s was set for 6:15 a.m. Burns wondered why Wilson would go to wake her up if it was her own clock that was set. He pointed at discrepancies in the times that Audra was supposed to have gone to bed and when she allegedly woke up coughing in the night.

Burns reminded the jury how Wilson had a ready answer when asked about body samples and how Audra might have his pubic hair on her, since they bathed in the same bathtub. However, Linda Wilson testified that Audra always used the middle bathroom for baths, and Wilson only showered in the other bathroom.

“I would like to point out to you the importance of this statement, in that, a person who is being questioned by the police, the first extensive type of interview of any kind, a person has already got those answers ready to be able to justify, you know, if they should find his hair on her,” Burns said. “Now, has a person thought about that in advance or not?”

Burns said that the one overwhelming fact in the case that he wanted to comment on was that the only evidence of anybody in the house the night of May 11 that was capable of smothering and raping Audra Matheny was the defendant. He said that he believed the motive for killing Audra was not there if she was raped by an intruder.

“Was Audra killed during the sexual event? Was a person smothering her to keep her from screaming or yelling to cut down the noise?” he asked. “You know, Sean is in the house, the little four-year-old. Are they going to wake Sean up, or was Audra killed because she had been raped just a few minutes before and Audra was going to tell? The motive to conceal her death is what I’m talking about. The motive to conceal her death. If an unknown killer came into the house and killed Audra, what possible reason would the unknown killer, you know, what would he care about concealing the fact that - why she did and how she died?”

Burns questioned the position Audra was found in. Although her face was bruised and bloody, her bands were placed on the pillow, and her legs were in a sleeping position, and she was fully dressed in pajamas. Her covers were pulled up to her shoulder.

Burns asked, then answered, who would put the little girl in that position after her death.

“Ladies and gentleman, the occupation of Mr. Wilson is relevant in this case. A mortician, ladies and gentlemen, is a person that dresses every one of us when we get in that funeral home and puts our clothes on us after we are dead,” Burns said. “A mortician is a person that places you - who thinks about body placement and who knows how to do it.

“How, is an unknown killer from the dark, if there should be any evidence that one was anywhere in this entire would, is that unknown person going to have any of those kind of concerns?” Burns asked. “Is he going to think about putting her clothes back on her?”

Burns asked the jury to imagine what it must have been like for Audra in her final moments of life.

“Now, the evidence in this case, the only person capable of having their hand over Audra’s mouth four to five minutes to keep her from getting any air into her lungs to keep her alive, the only person that could do that is Steve Wilson,” Burns said. “Steve Wilson, did he cause her death? Four to five minutes, she has got to be struggling beyond any comprehension any of us have ever had. We have all been swimming at one time in our life and we have all had common experiences and there was probably some situation in which you couldn’t get your breath and the kind of immediate struggle you had, and the kind of immediate fright that goes to your mind when you couldn’t get your breath. Imagine what it is, ladies and gentlemen, for four to five minutes. At some point in there, you know that you are dying.”

Burns reminded the jury that the yellow towel with the sperm cell, along with men’s underwear with semen, were found in the master bedroom.

“I guess we’re going to have that secret killer slip in through the night and he is going to go ahead go over to the master bedroom where Mr. Wilson is at, leave his shorts and clean himself off and leave a towel over in Mr. Wilson’s bedroom,” he mused. “This is a secret intruder in the night.”



Defense’s closing argument

Ken Johnston began by telling the jury how much power they had.

“You are more powerful than the prosecutor, you are more powerful than the judge,” he said. “You are more powerful than anybody else in the world right now, because you are determining the future and the fate of an individual human being.”

Johnston reminded the jury of reasonable doubt, and said that he believed that something was not right in the case against Wilson.

He told the jury again about Wilson; how his parents ran a little truck stop in Chickasha, then moved to California and at 18, went into the army. He reminded them about Wilson’s many Vietnam War citations and honors. Johnston talked about how Wilson met Linda Matheny and they married and had Sean, after which he had the vasectomy. Johnston told them how they moved to Oklahoma and Wilson was trying to get his business up and running, and how his parents were coming to help with the business. They were scheduled to arrive the Saturday after Audra was killed.

“Steve Wilson as the statement told you put Audra to bed the same time he did every night, and that next morning he got up, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, and he found a horror in his house, and that horror has continued until today,” Johnston said. “And I think when you review the evidence, and I am going to go through some of it with you, that you will see that in no way has the State of Oklahoma proved their case beyond a reasonable doubt.”



The verdict

After Johnston went through each step of the trial that he believed was unproved, Tony Burns spoke again in rebuttal closing. Both men worked hard to send the jury into deliberations with favorable intentions for their side. The jury deliberated a short time before returning their verdict - guilty. Ken Johnston asked for a poll of the jury, and each of the 12 members confirmed that guilty was their verdict. A few minutes after convicting Wilson, they were free to go home for the evening. They would return one more time, the next morning, to sentence him. Those deliberations took longer, and in the end, the defense received a small victory as the jury handed down life in prison, as opposed to the death penalty.

The trial was over. The jury was released. The Matheny family went home to Bastrop, La. The Wilson family returned to California. Steven Wilson was led away to jail, where he has remained for 24 years and today hopes that this is the year his parole is granted, and his life sentence is complete.