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From wikipedia:KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Trial is under way in Knoxville for the first of four people charged in the kidnapping, rape and killing of a young couple more than two years ago.
As court convened Monday, the judge read each of the 38 counts against 26-year-old Letalvis Cobbins. His attorney, Scott Green, responded by entering pleas.
Green said his client pleaded guilty to five counts of facilitating robbery or theft in the carjacking that set the crimes into motion in 2007. He also pleaded guilty to one count of rape. To the remaining counts, Green responded "not guilty."
Cobbins — of Lebanon, Ky. — is also charged with murder and kidnapping in the killings of 23-year-old Christopher Newsom and his 21-year-old girlfriend Channon Christian.
When Christopher Newsom's bound, shot and burned body was identified the day after he was killed in 2007, authorities warned his mother the sight would be too gruesome for her to see.
"Well, I insisted I had to go there," Mary Newsom recalled last week, her voice cracking.
"I put my arm around the body bag and told him, 'Chris, I will not say goodbye to you because I know someday I will see you again.' That's what I believe. And that's what gets me through."
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"Originally the plan was to do a carjacking," Eric "E" Boyd of Knoxville claimed Davidson told him, according to an investigator's court affidavit. Boyd has been convicted in federal court of being an accessory after the fact for helping hide Davidson. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
The others awaiting trial on murder and related counts are Cobbins' friend George "G" Thomas, 26, and Cobbins' girlfriend, Vanessa Coleman, 21. Cobbins told police they came with him from Lebanon, Ky., to spend New Year's 2007 with his estranged brother, Davidson.
Christian, a University of Tennessee senior, and Newsom had been dating about two months. Both still lived with their parents.
"I know Chris had fallen pretty hard, and I know she was very happy," said Channon's mother, Deena Christian. "It was just very sad. They were on their way home when it happened, they were coming here."
The couple had been out on a Saturday night date on Jan. 6, 2007, and were leaving a friend's apartment complex sometime after Channon made her last call, to her dad, around 12:30 a.m.
Channon was behind the wheel of her 2005 Toyota 4-Runner and Chris was standing in the open door kissing her when they were jumped at gunpoint in the parking lot, according to police accounts and Cobbins' statement.
They were bound, blindfolded and brought to Davidson's rundown rental home in an industrial inner-city neighborhood less than six miles and a world away.
According to defendants' statements, Newsom wasn't there long before he was taken away, sexually assaulted, shot in the back of the head, set on fire and left beside some railroad tracks a few blocks away.
Over the next 24 hours, Channon was raped in every conceivable way, bleach was sprayed in her mouth to destroy evidence and, Coleman told investigators, Davidson "snapped" her neck. Medical Examiner Darinka Mileusnic-Pochan testified at Boyd's trial, however, that the young woman died of suffocation after she was wrapped in plastic bags and dumped in a closed trash can.
The suspects were arrested within days in Knoxville and Lebanon.
Deena Christian and Mary Newsom know just about all the details by now.
"No, I have no doubts in my mind" the defendants are guilty, Deena Christian said.
"What is my hope? Well, I certainly hope that they are all convicted and all go to the death penalty," Mary Newsom said. "And even that is not enough justice for what they have done."
According to the testimony of the Knox County Acting Medical Examiner Dr. Darinka Mileusnic-Polchan at the subsequent trial of Eric Boyd, Newsom was repeatedly raped and then blindfolded, gagged, arms and feet bound and his head covered. Barefoot, he was either led or dragged outside the house to a set of nearby railroad tracks. He was shot in the back of the head, the neck, and the back, and his body then set on fire. Christian’s death would come only after hours of sexual torture, medical examiner Mileusnic-Polchan testified. Christian suffered horrific injuries to her vagina, anus and mouth. She was not only raped but savaged with “an object,” possibly a broken chair leg, the doctor testified. She was beaten in the head. Some type of chemical was poured down her throat, and her body, including her bleeding and battered genital area, likely scrubbed with the same solution - all while Christian was alive, the forensic expert said. She was then “hog-tied,” with curtains and strips of bedding, her face covered tightly with a small trash bag and her body stashed inside five large trash bags before being placed inside a large trash can and covered with sheets. Christian died slowly, suffocating, the medical examiner said.[5]
AP
Trial Under Way in Racially Charged Carjacking, Rape and Murder of Knoxville Couple - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News - FOXNews.com
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