Defense claims conspiracy in 2015 Newman Lake slaying

Defense attorney Joe Kuhlman didn’t hesitate to go to the heart of his case.

“There is a conspiracy here,” he told a jury during opening remarks Tuesday morning in the murder trial of his client, Colby D. Vodder. “But the evidence is going to show the conspiracy is against Mr. Vodder.”

Facing the panel of nine men and five women, with Vodder seated behind him in a dark suit jacket, white dress shirt, cornflower blue tie and a pair of khakis, the attorney said the case was rife with inconsistent testimony from multiple witnesses, shoddy police work and the troubling issue of a still-missing body and murder weapon.

The state, meanwhile, methodically laid out for jurors the series of events that led to the alleged killing of 32-year-old Bret Snow – and the drug-fueled cover-up that occurred after he’s believed to have been beaten to death, his body dismembered and hauled out of a Newman Lake garage in yellow buckets before being buried somewhere near Greenacres or Mount Spokane.

Vodder, 28, is the first of four suspects to be tried in the alleged kidnapping and slaying in December 2015. Cheryl Sutton, 38; Kenneth Stone, 34; and Alvaro Guajardo, 53, also have been charged, though Stone revealed Tuesday on the witness stand that he was promised a deal if his testimony against Vodder led to a conviction.

In his first remarks to the jury, Deputy Prosecutor Dale Nagy said Snow was kidnapped after a drug deal went bad. And it was Vodder, Sutton and Guajardo who together killed Snow and cut him into pieces in an “effort to avoid detection.” Stone, meanwhile, was nowhere near – locked and sheltered inside his home while Snow sat tied up in a makeshift bedroom in the garage.

During the yearslong investigation, Nagy told jurors cellphone records and witnesses led detectives to the workshop at 7822 N. Starr Road several months after the alleged slaying, where they found traces of blood and hair belonging to Snow. They didn’t, however, find any weapon used in the killing or locate any of his remains.

Those points were not lost on Kuhlman, who lambasted the state’s evidence, and who accused detectives of failing to properly record DNA evidence that would have shown a match to blood found at the scene.

“You will not see a weapon,” he said. “Most likely, you will hear conflicting statements as to any alleged weapon. You will not see buckets.”

Jurors first heard testimony from Snow’s mother, Lori Rison, and his sister, Brittany Snow. The two said they didn’t know much about the address where he was last seen, only that Snow was a drug user who would often spend days away from his home, buying and selling meth and heroin.

A good portion of their testimony centered on a dog, a pit bull Snow owned that was found at Sutton’s mother’s home after Snow disappeared and wasn’t heard from in months. As part of Vodder’s defense, Kuhlman has introduced an alternate-suspect theory that alleges only Sutton and Stone are culpable in Snow’s death.

Rison and Brittany Snow both said it would have been odd for Snow to leave the dog in anyone’s care – let alone the family of a woman he was known to sell drugs for – as the two were inseparable. In 2016, both Stone and Sutton were indicted on federal charges of drug trafficking.

“Do you have any personal knowledge of how your son’s dog ended up with Ms. Sutton’s mother?” Nagy said.

“I have no idea,” Rison answered.

Brittany Snow said she and a friend retrieved the dog after getting a tip it was there. She agreed when asked by Kuhlman if it seemed as though Sutton’s family was trying to hide the animal, adding it ran outside after a friend got them to open the door.

The third witness to testify Tuesday was Karen Nelson, a former drug user and friend of Snow. She was the last person, other than the people staying at the Starr Road residence, to see Snow alive, according to her testimony. She said she dropped him off at the home on or around Dec. 2, 2015. Snow is believed to have been killed on or a few days after Dec. 3.

In emotionally charged testimony, she said she wasn’t aware Sutton and Stone had any reason to be angry at Snow, and didn’t know why he would be killed.

“I was surprised,” she said, tears running down her cheeks. “Bret was the type of guy who would give his shirt off his back.”

Next to testify was Stone, who in early August was charged as a suspect in Snow’s death. Earlier this month, defense attorneys for Sutton, Guajardo and Vodder learned Stone was going to cooperate as a witness in exchange for a lesser charge of kidnapping and a sentence that runs concurrently with his federal drug conviction.

Stone said he was at the home when Snow came over in early December 2015, but only entered the workshop once during that time and was asked to leave. He said, from what he was told by Vodder, that Snow was tied up and beaten within an inch of his life because of a fudged drug transaction. He testified that he did not see Snow killed, nor could he make out who was there in the workshop, because he was high on meth “pretty much everyday” around that time.

In conflicting statements, he also said Vodder told him he beat Snow with a metal weapon, but in earlier interviews with defense attorney detectives, said he was told that Snow’s head hit the ground. He did not mention any weapon.

Stone told jurors Tuesday he thought Guajardo was the one solely responsible for killing Snow, after the group decided they wouldn’t be taking him to a hospital, and who suggested dismembering him and hiding the remains.

“The situation got pretty heavy,” he said. “And (Guajardo) suggested they get rid of him. Get rid of the body.”

For close to an hour, Kuhlman grilled Stone on the timing of his testimony and the deal he was getting.

“So, if you don’t do good today, you don’t get your deal” Kuhlman said. “Is that true?”

“Alls I can do is tell the truth,” Stone said. “Alls I can do is tell the truth.”

The trial is expected to last until the end of the week. Kuhlman said in opening arguments that Vodder planned to take the stand.