If Myers and Mosley had burglarized Back’s home two days earlier or waited until Back left for the Navy, they could have made off with Back’s valuables and his stepfather’s gun, safe and other family possessions without violence, Fornshell said.
Myers’s lawyer, Gregory Howard, postponed his opening statement until beginning his defense, following a prosecution expected to take more than a week and involve at least 40 witnesses and 200 pieces of evidence.
Back, a 2013 Waynesville High School graduate, had quit his pizza delivery job in anticipation of joining the Navy.
Myers and Back had been boyhood friends, while Myers lived nearby, but had little contact for five or six years, until Myers and Mosley visited Back’s home the day before the alleged murder, according to Fornshell.
Mosley is accused of stabbing Back in the back, stomach and chest on Jan. 28 after Myers was unable to strangle him with a garrote, which Fornshell described as “an assassin’s tool”.
Fornshell said they would show through records, surveillance video and witnesses that Myers purchased the materials used to fashion the garrote and to clean up after the struggle and dispose of Back’s body in Preble County.
After his credit card was rejected, Myers, “essentially a couch surfer,” borrowed $20 from a friend in Clayton to buy wire and other materials, Fornshell said.
With the last $7, Myers bought “the getaway gas” at Pat’s Gas, a well-known convenience store in Waynesville, Fornshell said.
Last week, prosecutors agreed to drop death penalty specifications against Mosley in exchange for his testimony against Myers. He is scheduled to testify Friday and still faces life in prison without parole.
On Wednesday, the courtroom gallery was nearly filled, including a large group supporting Back’s parents, along with Myers’s parents and Fornshell’s parents, as well as other observers on hand for what Judge Donald Oda II likened to “the coming attractions to a movie.”
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