LAKEPORT, Calif. – The defense attorney for a Maine man accused of a double murder presented the last of his case on Wednesday morning before both sides offered their closing arguments to the jury.
Robby Alan Beasley, 32, is accused of killing Frank and Yvette Maddox of Augusta, Maine, on Jan. 22, 2010, alongside of Morgan Valley Road near Lower Lake.
Dressed in a light-colored suit, Beasley was attentive throughout the proceedings. His attorney, Stephen Carter, questioned two final witnesses – former sheriff's detective Tom Andrews and Det. Frank Walsh – before closing arguments started.
Beasley is charged with two counts of murder, one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm, and special allegations of committing multiple murders in the first or second degree, committing the offense with the intent to inflict great bodily injury and use of a firearm.
Beasley did not take the stand during the trial, although his co-defendant in the case, Elijah Bae McKay, 30 – who had grown up with him in Maine and helped set up Beasley in the marijuana growing trade – did testify.
McKay has so far not been scheduled for trial, although he faces the same charges and is alleged to have provided Beasley with the 9 millimeter handgun he used to shoot the Maddoxes and helped destroy evidence afterward.
Carter would focus on McKay in his closing arguments, suggesting it was McKay, and not Beasley, who took the Maddoxes’ lives.
Beasley had brought the couple from Maine to work with him in growing marijuana. However, believing they had broken into his Lower Lake apartment and stolen marijuana, Beasley is alleged to have lured the couple into driving him down the remote road, convincing them that his grandmother had died and he needed to be driven to the airport.
McKay had testified earlier in the trial that Beasley had planned to scare the couple into admitting that they stole his marijuana, but that the confrontation deteriorated and that after shooting at their feet, and shooting Frank Maddox in the leg, he shot both of them in the head.
After Judge Andrew Blum read jury instructions, prosecutor Art Grothe moved into closing arguments by reviewing the charges against Beasley, explaining to jurors the process of considering the charges, and how to understand malice and the deliberative process on Beasley's part.
In most trials, there are at least a few points in dispute. In this case, he said the only point of dispute between the prosecution and defense is whether or not Beasley killed the Maddoxes.
He explained how McKay had brought Beasley out from Maine and set him up in marijuana growing, and how that in the fall of 2009 Beasley then brought the Maddoxes to California, where they began working in McKay's grow on Morgan Valley Road.
“In short order they start causing trouble with the other trimmers” in that operation, said Grothe.
When McKay returned from a fall fishing trip, he told Beasley to get them out of the operation because they were causing trouble. Beasley then had them work for him, and they stayed at his Lower Lake apartment where some of his growing operation was taking place.
At the end of 2009 the couple was involved in a domestic dispute and there were concerns that the police would be called, Grothe said. McKay again warned Beasley about the Maddoxes, who he said were a risk to their operation.
Beasley kicked them out in December 2009 and they moved in with Elvin Sikes, who allowed them to use a spare bedroom. At about that time, someone broke into Beasley's Lower Lake apartment, and Grothe said Beasley concluded that it was the couple, based in part on a small footprint that he found and believed was Yvette Maddox's.
McKay testified to telling Beasley to get the 9 millimeter he kept at his outdoor grow and use it to protect himself from getting ripped off, Grothe recounted.
Beasley then began talking about killing and burying the couple, with McKay suggesting that instead he scare the couple, Grothe said.
Grothe said McKay's attitude was that Beasley had made a mess of killing the couple and that he needed to clean it up himself.
When McKay went to pick Beasley up from Morgan Valley Road, Grothe said Beasley's first words to him were, “I'm going to hell.” Grothe said Beasley continued obsessing, and was worrying about killing the wrong people.
Beasley's girlfriend, Kim Van Horn, testified at trial that she visited him in the Lake County Jail, where he wrote on his hand, “Did they find the gun?” Grothe said McKay had asked Beasley about the gun, with Beasley replying that no one would ever find it.
Grothe also recounted testimony from correctional officer James Dunlap, who said Beasley had scratched “Elijah McKay is a rat bitch snitch New England” in a cell. That graffiti, said Grothe, showed that Beasley didn't call McKay a liar, but showed his anger at being ratted out.
On the night of the murders, Beasley went to Walmart to buy new cell phones, boxer shorts and Armor All wipes. Surveillance cameras showed him wearing a black leather jacket McKay had given him.
Grothe showed a chart of cell phone calls and texts that showed a flurry of calls between Beasley and McKay after 6:30 p.m. on the day of the murder. It was sometime between 5:30 p.m. and 6 p.m., Grothe argued, that the Maddoxes were killed.
Sikes had testified that Frank Maddox had admitted to “taking what was owed him from his friend,” with Sikes saying that Beasley was the only person Frank Maddox called a friend, Grothe said.
When Andrews had questioned Beasley about the couple, Grothe said Beasley kept going off on tangents, suggesting gangs may have been involved or veering to other topics. He claimed to have not seen the couple since before Christmas 2009.
Defense seeks to shift blame to McKay
In his afternoon closing arguments, Carter took on the prosecution's case, arguing that it had not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
“I assert to you that there is absolutely another reasonable explanation,” he said.
That explanation, he said, was that it was McKay who committed the murders.
Carter said McKay lied in his testimony more than once, pointing to inconsistencies in his statements about where he kept an unregistered 9 millimeter handgun, which he had said he kept both in the marijuana garden and in his home.
“He lied to you, absolutely lied to you,” Carter maintained.
Carter also faulted McKay's testimony about when he was gone on a trip to the East Coast in January 2010.
It was only after McKay returned and turned his “business” phone back on, on Jan. 22, 2010, that the couple was murdered. “It's when McKay gets back that the Maddoxes die.”
Carter said it was a juror who had raised the question about whether or not there had actually been a cake at a birthday party for McKay's brother Taj on the day of the murder.
McKay had testified to choking some down after getting back from picking up Beasley not far from the murder scene. However, Carter said no one else testified to there being a cake, and Taj said he hadn't wanted one. Carter said Elijah McKay's response to his questioning on that point was “the definition of squirrely,” with McKay saying it could have been pie or cake.
Carter said McKay is highly motivated to lie and that he's protected by an immunity agreement from being prosecuted for information he provides as part of his testimony. He accused McKay of being part of an interstate drug trafficking ring and being concerned about the Maddoxes harming his business.
“No one's going to get between Elijah and his money, and his money is weed,” said Carter.
Carter said the correctional officer had acknowledged that the words “rat” and “snitch” can be applied to liars, and pointed out that nothing in the way of DNA connected to Beasley was found at the murder scene.
He said there was another “reasonable interpretation” for Beasley's question to Van Horn about the gun, and that was that he wanted the gun to be found, as it would prove McKay was guilty.
Carter suggested that McKay and some of the witnesses in the case were working together in the illegal marijuana business and covering for each other while throwing Beasley away. “Wouldn’t it be nice if we had unbiased witnesses?”
The “big boss” wasn’t Beasley, but McKay, Carter said. “Elijah McKay had every reason in the world to want the Maddoxes gone,” because they were threatening his business.
Carter questioned the prosecution’s cell phone logs and call chart, which he called “far from infallible,” and argued that no one put Beasley at the murder scene with a gun except for McKay.
He said McKay got back from the East Coast, was angry to find the Maddoxes still there and decided to get rid of them himself.
Carter questioned why the prosecution didn’t present when Beasley entered Walmart, only that he left shortly after 8 p.m. The surveillance cameras showed him wearing a black t-shirt he often wore, which Carter said proved once again that McKay’s testimony was flawed, since he had stated on the stand that he had burned all of Beasley’s clothes after the murder.
He said the interstate pot ring McKay was running proved a big enough reason for him to kill the couple.
In his rebuttal, Grothe said the jury needed to look at the evidence, not “wild theories” not supported by the evidence.
He said minor inconsistencies in testimony due to the fact that nearly three years have elapsed – and peoples’ memories aren’t foolproof after that time – are to be expected.
Regarding the different statements about where McKay kept the 9 millimeter, Grothe said it was in the pot garden during the growing season and was kept at McKay’s house at other times of the year. He also chalked up the matter of pie versus cake to an issue of memory.
The testimony by Sikes couldn’t be discounted, and Grothe said the phone calls and texts all pointed to Beasley luring the couple to give him a ride. “And he took them out and he killed them.”
Grothe said the Maddoxes were brutally executed over about three pounds of marijuana. “They were killed by their friend, Robby Beasley.”
The jury began deliberations at 3:45 p.m. and Blum allowed them to go home at 4:30 p.m. He directed them to return and continue deliberations at 9 a.m. Thursday.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
