Prosecutor Describes Walk To Death It’s Called ‘Sad Case’ Of Drug Deal Gone Awry

After a day of drinking and smoking marijuana, 15-year-old Cedar Pfenning thought he was going for a drunken walk in the woods with a friend.

Instead, Pfenning’s friend Wayne Thurman led him to his death, shooting the teen four times as he ran for his life, Boundary County Prosecutor Denise Woodbury told a jury Monday.

Thurman, 19, is charged with first-degree murder for the August 1996 killing of Pfenning. The teenager’s body was left in the woods south of Bonners Ferry. Authorities found the body nine days later and arrested Thurman, who still had his .44-caliber pistol with him.

If convicted of the murder, Thurman could face the death penalty. A three-week trial began Monday for the bespectacled, lanky teen with a boyish face that makes him look much younger than his 19 years.

Woodbury told the 10-woman, two-man jury they were about to hear a “sad case” about a murder that allegedly took place because of a drug deal gone awry. During a day-long party, Thurman told friends he wanted to kill Pfenning. He thought the teen was a police informer who turned in drug users, so he asked Pfenning to go for a walk in the woods, Woodbury said.

“The defendant took his .44 (caliber pistol) on the walk and shot Cedar in the chest. Cedar threw up his arms and said, ‘No Wayne, don’t do it,’ and tried to run,” Woodbury recounted to the jury. “He was shot in the back. As he continued to climb up the hill, a third shot was fired into the back of Cedar Pfenning.”

The last shot, Woodbury said, came after Thurman walked up to Pfenning’s bloodied body collapsed on the hill.

“He fired another shot right through his head,” she said.

Thurman confessed to another inmate about the murder while in jail, Woodbury said. He even talked of how he “psyched” himself up for a half-hour before killing Pfenning.

Boundary County authorities arrested Thurman after they discovered Pfenning’s body and talked with some of Thurman’s friends. During the arrest, Woodbury said Thurman told officers to let his friends go, saying “they are innocent. I’m guilty, I’m guilty man.”

Despite matching the bullets found in Pfenning’s body to Thurman’s gun, defense attorney Mark Jones said prosecutors don’t know who really murdered Pfenning. A group of teens with Thurman and Pfenning the day he was killed were drunk, high on marijuana and all had different stories about what happened.

Thurman actually passed out part of the day and left his gun in another teenager’s car, Jones said. He insinuated any one of the teens could have taken the gun and killed Pfenning, who was thought to be a “narc.”

The person who first called police about Pfenning being murdered was the mother of one of the partying teenagers, Jones said. She told police where the body was and that the bullets in Pfenning’s body would match Thurman’s pistol.

“Someone got possession of that gun and killed Cedar Pfenning. You aren’t going to be able to tell who fired that gun,” Jones said. “You are going to need a scorecard to sort (all the stories) out. This puzzle, these pieces don’t form one picture that shows the defendant is guilty.” , DataTimes