jmccann@heraldsun.com; 419-6601
DURHAM — Days ago during her opening statement for Keith Wade Kidwell’s first-degree murder trial, District Attorney Tracey Cline told jurors that the defendant in February 2005 fled the Kangaroo convenience store at 4604 N. Roxboro St. in victim Crayton Nelms’ stolen pickup truck and wound up in Oklahoma.
That’s where Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper Shawn Griffey arrested Kidwell on Feb. 11, 2005, for speeding. Besides the trooper learning the truck Kidwell was driving was stolen from a homicide scene, what followed was something of a getting-to-know-you session between the two.
While compiling his report on the traffic stop, Griffey asked Kidwell for his size. Kidwell was around 6-feet-5-inches tall and nearly 300 pounds in 2005. He’s not as heavy now, but the defendant has been behind bars for the past 4½ years.
“You ever play ball?” Griffey asked Kidwell.
“Football,” Kidwell said.
“High school or college?” Griffey probed.
“High school,” Kidwell said.
Griffey asked Kidwell why he didn’t play college ball. The trooper wondered if it was because Kidwell didn’t have the drive to play on the college level or because the big guy just wasn’t good enough.
Kidwell defended his skills. He said he was good enough to play college ball, and he had the drive to do so but instead wanted to be a chef. At the time, Kidwell told Griffey, he was working at a gas station.
Which fits Cline’s theory that Nelms’ murder was committed by somebody who knew the inner workings of the Kangaroo store. Pamela Durham was the Kangaroo store manager at the time Nelms was killed, and her testimony last week suggested that the average person off the street wouldn’t know how to access the money at the store and wouldn’t know how to get to the videotape that records surveillance at the store.
Durham testified that between $900 to $1,000 was missing from the store after Nelms was killed. The videotape was gone, too. It was found along the highway toward Oklahoma, and the actual tape had been pulled from the casing, Cline said.
Kidwell in 2004 was an employee of the Kangaroo where Nelms was killed, Cline said.
On the videotape from the Oklahoma Highway Patrol vehicle, Kidwell told Griffey how his mom used to fuss at him and cuss at him about not washing the dishes at home. And his life had been one wherein everybody figured they knew what was best for him, Kidwell said.
Kidwell seemed to be articulating that he knew what he needed. And at one point on the tape he indicated that what he needed was a smoke.
“Can I get a cigarette, man?” Kidwell asked Griffey.
“Nope, you can’t smoke,” the trooper said.
