Inmate not impressed by governor's jet

December 20, 2005

MARY AMES

Frontiersman reporter

PALMER -A Big Lake man flown up from an Arizona prison to testify in a recent murder trial also testified under oath about what it was like to ride in Gov. Frank Murkowski's newly acquired $2.7 million state jet.

Terry Sudbury, 36, was arrested in February 2004 for robbing the Susitna Professional Pharmacy near Wasilla at gunpoint on Sept. 10, 2003.

Convicted in November 2004 and sentenced in March, Sudbury flew to Arizona in a commercial jet in August, with two Department of Corrections officers accompanying him, he said in a recent interview at Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility.

In September, just as he was getting settled into life in Arizona and had a chance to get a job within the jail and earn a little money, Sudbury said, he got a notice in the mail to attend a teleconference. That's when he learned he was headed back to Alaska and being fingered as an alternate suspect in the murder trial of Richard &#8220Bart” Deremer, 34.

&#8220That's when I found out they were trying to blame me,” Sudbury said.

Another inmate in the jail had secretly recorded conversations with Sudbury in which he admitted being &#8220mixed up in a murder.” Deremer's defense attorney, John Murtagh, pitched the idea to the jury that Sudbury, and not his client, pulled the trigger on the shotgun that killed David McKinney, 49, of Big Lake on Nov. 23, 2003, and made off with McKinney's cache of prescription drugs before setting his house ablaze.

Murtagh wanted Sudbury back in Palmer Superior Court to testify, but there was no reason to bring Sudbury back if he was only going to take the Fifth Amendment, refusing to testify against himself.

But as the prosecution rested in the Deremer case, the defense asked Sudbury in another teleconference call whether he would take the Fifth if he were asked to testify before a jury.

In a call on the record in open court Nov. 16, Sudbury agreed to testify.

That statement won him a Nov. 17 ride back to Alaska on Gov. Murkowski's jet, which is also used to ferry Alaska prison inmates between the state and Arizona correctional facilities with which the state has contracted.

When attorneys for the defense and prosecution finished questioning Sudbury, members of the jury submitted questions for him to answer.

&#8220Terry,” one juror wrote, &#8220is the new jet nice?”

&#8220It sucks,” Sudbury said on the witness stand.

The jury ended up convicting Deremer of first-degree murder, first-degree arson, second-degree murder, evidence tampering and first-degree burglary in McKinney's slaying. His sentencing is set for Feb. 24. Deremer's wife, Cynthia Estes, is scheduled to go to trial in Palmer Superior Court Jan. 17 for her alleged part in McKinney's slaying.

Last week at MSPTF, Sudbury took the time to elaborate on his comment about the jet.

&#8220It's small,” Sudbury said Dec. 13. &#8220If he's flying, he can't take a lot of people. The bathroom didn't work. And they had to put the big guys in the back for weight. We were the guinea pigs for the government. If it crashed, nobody would care about us. He'd have been better off to take the money and build a prison here and not take people away from their families. Seeing families is part of rehabilitation. How can they visit?”

Sudbury said he doesn't want to go back to Arizona, but doesn't know what the state has planned for him. He's being kept away from Deremer, so he is in the &#8220crappy” part of MSPTF, he said. The reason for the separation is that officials are afraid Sudbury will hurt Deremer, he said.

&#8220I can't hurt him any worse than he hurt himself,” he said.

Contact Mary Ames at

352-2284 or mary.ames@

frontiersman.com.