Computer chat takes center stage at Welton trial

PALMER -- A teen-age friend of Samuel Welton, who died in a Wasilla house fire Sept. 15, 2000, testified at Suzette Welton's trial that the boys had played with lighters and lighter fluid on several occasions.

Luke Dubber said Sam's older brother Jeremiah had showed him how to empty lighter fluid in his hand and ignite it. "He lit paper on fire, plastic pens. He flickered a lighter while it was in his [pants] pocket and burned holes in his clothing," Dubber said.

Suzette Welton, 38, is on trial for allegedly murdering 14-year-old Samuel in the fire that resulted in his death. The state contends she took out a $100,000 life insurance policy on each of her teen sons, drugged them with over-the-counter sleeping medicine, then lit the fire to cause their death and collect the money.

The defense believes an alternate theory is that Sam lit the fire himself, either accidently or intentionally. They are presenting witnesses to show that the mother was wrongly targeted by police from the start.

Public Defender Greg Heath and assistant public defender George Davenport finished their first week of defense testimony with Dubber's account of the boys' activities.

According to Dubber, Sam was adept at playing with fire. The boys ribbed each other in online chat conversations, using cuss words they didn't use in normal talk, he said. Once he and Sam were together at a sleep-over in Wasilla when Jeremiah showed him sleeping pills he had swallowed that night.

Dubber said he had not spoken any of these details to Alaska State Troopers investigating the case. "I didn't think I had anything useful," he said. He wasn't interviewed until "several months" after Sam's death, he said. By then Welton had already been arrested and was jailed at Hiland Correctional Center. The first time he spoke of these events was when her defense attorneys contacted him.

Luke last saw Samuel when he came to Anchorage in June 2000 with the Weltons, who picked him up at his Nikiski home to help them move from Anchorage to Wasilla, he said.

He helped with the move and spent a night at the Wasilla home visiting Sam and Jeremiah. They slept on the living room floor while Luke took the fold-out bed on the couch. That was the night Jeremiah allegedly showed him "bluish-green pills in foiled containers" and told him he had taken a few.

"Sam and I, we never took it [sleeping pills]," Dubber said.

That visit was the last time he saw his friend alive. They spoke on the phone and chatted online between June and Sept. 13.

During the fire investigation, the state confiscated an undamaged computer from the Welton living room. Alaska State Trooper computer expert, Curt Harris, was able to lift hundreds of pages of chat and other documents from the hard drive of that computer using a special police program called Encase.

Dubber was shown transcripts from those retrieved documents of chat between he and Sam from Aug. 3 to Sept. 13, 2000. Dubber's nickname was Cyrus and Sam's was Spider X.

Palmer District Attorney Roman Kalytiak showed Dubber transcripts of the conversation and asked whether these discussions mentioned depression or playing with fire.

Luke examined the now-forgotten chat and said no. Mostly what the boys spoke about had to do with the computer game Tribes, other computer games and strategizing, he said.

"And you did a lot of joking and ribbing … where you said things you and Sam wouldn't say in front of your parents, isn't that right?" Kalytiak asked.

The boy agreed, saying he and Sam didn't normally cuss in conversation. Sometimes they listened to rock music such as Bare Naked Ladies and Limp Bizkit, he said.

"Do the computer games and such music make you a 'homocidal maniac?'" Kalytiak asked.

"No," Dubber said. "Sometimes it gets your blood going."

In other testimony, Trooper Harris presented information about how he was able to retrieve documents and chat discussions from the computer hard drive. Judge Milton Souter ruled this is necessary for authenticating the time-frame when the writings were created. Since it's relatively new for such information to be submitted as evidence in a court case, it was necessary to establish a context for the writings. The defense was expecting to then call witnesses who could testify on the content of the writings, many of which are attributed to Samuel.

The trial continues today in Palmer Superior Court before Anchorage Superior Court Judge Milton Souter.