jmccann@heraldsun.com; 419-6601
DURHAM — On February 10, 2005, Crayton Nelms was working the graveyard shift at the Kangaroo store at 4604 N. Roxboro St., District Attorney Tracey Cline said Thursday during her opening argument in Keith Wade Kidwell’s first-degree murder trial.
The work at the convenience store was part time, Cline continued. It was so Nelms, 44, could make some extra money to support his children, who were present Thursday in the courtroom.
“Mr. Nelms did not know that was the last day of his life,” Cline told jurors.
The overnight shift is when milkman Scott Holmes would come by the Kangaroo store to take out the old milk and put in the new. Sometimes the door at the store was locked around 3 a.m., sometimes it was unlocked, Holmes testified. This time it was unlocked, he said.
So Holmes said he went about replenishing the cooler. Then it came time to have Nelms sign off on the delivery. But Nelms’ body was face down on the floor with his arms stretched out, and he was bleeding badly and his pockets were turned inside out, the district attorney said.
“In the middle of his back was a shoe print where somebody was holding him down,” Cline said.
Some 24 hours later, the victim’s burgundy truck was found in Oklahoma.
“And it was being driven …” Cline paused while walking toward the defendant, “by Keith Kidwell.”
The milkman said he saw the truck being driven away when he arrived at the convenience store.
When the truck was recovered in Oklahoma, inside the vehicle were some Nike shoes — footwear that had the same design on the outer sole as the shoe print on Nelms’ back, Cline said.
The district attorney argued that the person who killed Nelms knew the inner workings at Kangaroo — how to access the money at the store; how to access the videotape that captured what the surveillance cameras recorded. And she pointed out that Kidwell worked at the store in 2004.
“When the officers got there that tape was gone!” Cline roared.
On the highway from Durham to Oklahoma, the tape was tossed, Cline said.
So there was Nelms at the store in a bloody pool, his pockets empty of their contents, and his beaten body empty of life, the district attorney said.
“That’s why we’re here,” Cline told the jurors.
The defense deferred its opening statement until after the prosecution completes its case. The trial continues today.
