Defense: Butte killing was a sham kidnapping gone wrong

PALMER — A Butte episode that ended in a mother’s death was either a sham kidnapping gone awry or a real kidnapping escalated to murder by a spurned lover.

Ultimately, a jury will decide which account fits the evidence.

Attorneys made closing arguments Tuesday afternoon in the murder trial of Benjamin E. Wilson, 31, who stands accused in the shooting death of 28-year-old Letitia Faller Nov. 9, 2014. Faller was bleeding to death when first responders were summoned to the parking lot of a Butte convenience store, and died shortly thereafter, authorities said at the time. Witnesses to the shooting and emergency medical personnel tried unsuccessfully to save her life.

Prosecutor Lindsey Burton described a night of intense emotions as “Big Ben,” the nickname given to Wilson in Faller’s phone, subjected Faller to numerous threatening texts. The texts threatened her, threatened her daughter, threatened her boyfriend, Torin Ford, and amounted to mental torture, Burton said.

References to a romantic relationship litter the texts read by Burton.

“You made it clear that I didn’t have a girlfriend that I was so proud of having,” another text reads in part. “By the way, that was after you made me the guy you were (expletive)ing at the time, and only a day or two before you dismissed me to (expletive) Torin (Ford).”

Other texts reference a perceived slight to Wilson’s masculinity.

“I can’t help but think I have wasted my time with you,” another text quoted by Burton reads. ”I was willing to do almost anything to do with you, and you were able to (throw) me to the side like a bitch. That is one thing I can’t be. I notice you have a better relationship with guys that have bitch-like qualities. So (on) second thought, you might not like the real me.”

The prosecution offered the texts as evidence of Wilson’s intentions. That distinction is key: intention is the difference between first-degree murder and potential effective life sentence, and lesser charges of second-degree murder or manslaughter, or an acquittal of the charges on the grounds it was self-defense, as sought by Wilson’s attorney.

The texts were so abusive and threatening to Faller that they were incapacitating, Burton said.

“She cried,” she said. “She cried in the fetal position on the floor and begged Ben to leave her alone, that she didn’t do it, that she didn’t mean to.”

The threat behind the texts was so credible, that Ford, Faller’s 26-year-old methamphetamine-using boyfriend, agreed to meet with Wilson, Burton said. Faller also later signed over education and health privacy rights for her daughter to a relative. In response, Wilson kidnapped Ford, bound him hand and foot with a combination of handcuffs and duct tape, duct-taped his eyes closed, and questioned Ford in the woods about the Butte drug trade, videotaping Ford’s answers, according to Burton. The video recordings were played for the jury.

“You will never see one single text in here where he explicitly says ‘I’m going to blow your head off,’” she said. “You won’t see one text here where he says ‘I’m gonna cut you,’ but you see a lot of texts where he implies you must, must, must do what I tell you or else I can’t guarantee what will happen.”

In response to the kidnapping, Faller agreed to meet with Wilson at the store, where she immediately confronted Wilson as he released Ford, leaning through the passenger side window of Wilson’s truck trying to stab Wilson, attorneys said. In response, Wilson shot her once in the head, got out to check her, then got in his truck and drove away, later calling 911 to tell authorities his address, authorities said. Prosecutors said that constituted flight. Defense attorneys said Wilson was simply removing himself from a potentially dangerous encounter with law enforcement.

The kidnapping designed to force Ford into snitching, in order to make him less manly, thus making Wilson a more attractive lover, Burton said, in her rebuttal.

“Ladies and gentlemen, that’s what this was really all about,” she said. “Mr. Wilson was going to show Letitia that her boyfriend was a bitch. A little bitch that folded at the first sign of duct tape and gave up everyone, all of her friends. He committed the worst crime by snitching.”

Wilson’s public defender, Jeffrey Bradley, argued that Ford’s kidnapping was part of a scheme to scare Faller straight by driving a wedge between her and a coterie of drug dealers in the Butte.

“Letitia had worked herself into this position where she gets free drugs in exchange for helping to facilitate business. If he could create a rift between them where they worried that continued association with her could be bad for their business because they would get attention from the police that they didn’t want, then it could result in Letitia not getting drugs, therefore not using drugs, therefore no longer being a meth head, clearing up, becoming a better person, and maybe, if Ben was really lucky, realizing that she could do better than Torin Ford,”Bradley said.

“The plan, in hindsight, was not the most brilliant of things, but it also was not something for which he could see this kind of outcome,” Bradley added.

The fatal miscalculation occurred when Faller responded violently, due in part to her intoxication, Bradley argued. He alluded to tests showing Faller’s blood contained four times the level of meth required for intoxication.

Seen from that perspective, the duct tape over Ford’s eyes was “a piece of stage art,” Bradley said. “It’s not real. It allows Torin Ford, in the aftermath, to give a reason for why he named these drug dealers.”

Bradley also sought to undermine Ford’s credibility by offering a long list of inconsistencies in his testimony. Ford at one point told investigators he hadn’t been kidnapped, then admitted the kidnapping when asked about the duct tape. He also claimed to have researched Bradley’s entire defense record via the Fairbanks public library, a claim apparently conflicting with testimony delivered by the defense’s lone witness, the clerk of the Palmer court. Ford also referenced John Rambo and Willie Nelson in his testimony.

“Now, it feels a little silly to recount Torin Ford’s lies,” Bradley said. “I think you’ve got it at this point. Torin’s got all the credibility of a televangelist caught stumbling out of a brothel in the morning with cocaine on his upper lip.”

During her rebuttal, Burton admitted Ford was not an ideal witness, but merely the best witness available.

“Torin is Torin,” she said. “Torin couldn’t manage a sandwich.”

Several of Wilson’s relatives, like his aunt, Noelle Wilson, who said she and another relative had driven in from Talkeetna every day of the trial, struggled to reconcile the account of Wilson offered in testimony with man they knew as “Gentle Ben.” They see the case as open-and-shut self-defense, Noelle Wilson said.

“I have to believe that the rules determine the use of deadly force to defend yourself against someone coming towards you intending to do you harm … are still in place,” she wrote, in a hand-written statement for the Frontiersman.

Contact Brian O’Connor at 352-2269, brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com, or on Twitter @reporterbriano.