Man found guilty in murder-for-drugs trial

Separate trial scheduled to begin in January for wife of Big Lake resident convicted Thursday

November 18, 2005

MARY AMES/Frontiersman reporter

PALMER - A Big Lake man was found guilty of multiple charges, including first-degree murder, in a 2003 case of murder for drugs.

Richard &#8220Bart” DeRemer III, 34, was charged with first-degree murder, second-degree murder, first-degree arson, second-degree theft and tampering with physical evidence in the death of David McKinney 49, of Big Lake. DeRemer and his wife, who will be tried separately, were charged Sept. 20, 2004, for planning the murder of his wife's cousin, killing him with a shotgun blast to the head, looting McKinney's safe and setting the fire that burned the his house to destroy incriminating evidence.

After listening to testimony for four weeks in Superior Court Judge Eric Smith's courtroom, the jury spent barely four hours deliberating before they returned with guilty verdicts on all counts except the second-degree murder charge.

Firefighters responding to a house fire in Big Lake on Nov. 24, 2003, found McKinney's body in the charred remains. The state medical examiner discovered McKinney was dead before the house fire. He had been shot at close range with a shotgun.

Investigators from the Alaska State Troopers searched the charred debris of the house but found no weapon, indicating McKinney hadn't killed himself. They also found the door to McKinney's floor safe had been cut around the tumbler, and the morphine, morphine pills and more than 400 Dilaudid pills kept there were missing. A well-worn cutting wheel had been left in the safe.

The murder, robbery and arson remained a mystery until September 2004, when three people came to the trooper post and reported to investigators that DeRemer told them he killed McKinney.

The following day, DeRemer's cousin, Jason Chew, wore a wire, a concealed recording device, and captured his confessions on tape for the troopers.

&#8220How many times did you hear the defendant confess to the people closest to him?” Suzanne Powell, assistant district attorney, asked the jury.

&#8220How many times did you hear from witnesses who didn't want to be here? How often do you have this many confessions?”

DeRemer's defense attorney, John Murtagh, refuted witness testimony and DeRemer's detailed descriptions of the murder on tape. Someone else did the murder, Murtagh said.

&#8220My guy's a fool,” Murtagh told the jury. &#8220He was a pretty damn scared fool.”

Everything important DeRemer said came from the initial interview with Sgt. Dallas Massie, an investigator for the troopers, shortly after the fire, Murtagh said. In that interview, DeRemer told Massie that a week before, McKinney had come over and confronted his wife, Cynthia Estes, saying she stole medications from him. DeRemer was scared and chased McKinney away with a baseball bat, he said.

The man Murtagh said killed McKinney, Terry Sudbury, testified Tuesday and Wednesday this week about statements he made and notes he wrote in February and March 2004 while he was in Mat-Su Pretrial Facility in February and March 2004.

While Sudbury was in jail awaiting trial for the armed robbery of Susitna Pro-fessional Pharmacy, troopers used the &#8220false friend, or snitch,” method of getting information about the murder from him, Murtagh said.

James Watford came forward to troopers, Murtagh said, and told them Sudbury told him about the murder. Watford wore a wire five times while talking to Sudbury in jail, and those recordings pointed to Sudbury as the killer, Murtagh said.

But Sudbury testified that he and Watford scripted those tapes, deliberately trying to mislead investigators.

&#8220James is the story writer, not me,” Sudbury said. &#8220James wrote the stories.”

Sudbury said that Watford's father-in-law worked for the Big Lake Fire Department, and Watford called him to find out details about the shotgun and the safe.

DeRemer's taped description of the murder to Chew in September 2004 was detailed. His wife, he said, planned the whole thing.

&#8220I was just the laborer,” DeRemer said.

DeRemer also told his cousin that he pulled the trigger after kicking in the front door, just as McKinney started to raise his hands to protect himself. DeRemer said he pulled the trigger, covered what was left of McKinney's skull with some sort of bath mat and called his wife on a walkie talkie to come pick him up.

&#8220It's done,” he told her.

&#8220One thing for sure, it was one hell of an adrenaline rush, taking a life,” DeRemer said on the tape. &#8220I mean, that's not why I did it.”

The couple used some of the drugs for themselves and sold some, making enough money to see them through the winter, he said.

When he started to worry about his wife turning him in if he left her, he secretly made videotapes of her shooting up in front of their small child, according to testimony.

He planned to use the tapes as blackmail if necessary, he told friends.

DeRemer was being held at MSPT in lieu of $600,000 cash-only bail and a court-approved third-party custodian. His sentencing had not been scheduled at press time.

Cynthia Estes, 45, DeRemer's wife and alleged accomplice, is scheduled for trial Jan. 17 on the same charges. Estes was released on a $25,000 bond on Sept. 23, 2004. Her mother, Joan Estes, signed as her court-approved third-party custodian.

Contact Mary Ames at

352-2284 or mary.ames@

frontiersman.com.