Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Whitler's children take the stand in process server murder trial

May 5, 2009


By Hallie Woods
For Loveland Connection

The two young children of a Loveland man accused of killing a process server testified that their father said he would “get them out of here” minutes before he stabbed his daughter twice and strangled both children.

James Whitler’s son, 11, and daughter, 13, whose names Loveland Connection is withholding, avoided making eye contact with their father Monday as they gave their accounts of what happened the day process server Stephen Allen was beaten to death.

Whitler is accused of fatally beating Allen with a baseball bat May 28, 2008, after Allen and Lisa Whitler served Whitler with divorce papers and a restraining order. 

Whitler allegedly then turned on his two children. 

Both children said their father had “planted in their mind” that their mother was a terrible person who was ruining their family. 

Prosecutors showed a video interview with Whitler’s son two days after Allen was killed where the boy said he hated his mother and that his dad was “the nicest person alive.”

The tone was much different almost a year later. 

The two children were downstairs when their mother and Allen entered the house. At first, the three adults sat around the table and spoke calmly. 

Then, things started to get louder and Whitler ran to the basement to get a suitcase. That’s when Whitler told his children he would “get them out of there.”

The children said he was hiding a baseball bat in the suitcase and went back upstairs.

“We heard our mother yell ‘Oh my God’ and then we heard lots of crashing sounds,” the girl said.

At some point, the girl said her father yelled for help and she ran upstairs.

She said she saw Allen holding her father in a headlock and Whitler yelled at her to throw him a knife. 

She grabbed a sushi knife, tossed it in her father’s direction and ran back downstairs. 

Whitler’s daughter said after her father beat the process server, spraying blood all over the house, he told her to come upstairs and sit in his recliner. Her brother was told to stay downstairs and shut the door.

“He told me to close my eyes. Then, I felt him put his hand on my chest, and then he stabbed me,” she said. “I opened them and I tried to kick him and get away. He said ‘This is for your own good, I have to make you forget.’”

The girl said she wrestled with her father as he stabbed her twice in the chest and cut her fingers as she tried to grab the knife.

After hearing his sister scream, Whitler’s son went upstairs with a wooden sword from his room and began hitting his father on his back to save his sister, he said.

“Then, he turns around and the next thing I know he's on top of me and the next thing I know it's black as night out,” the boy testified. “He was trying to strangle me.”

After Whitler strangled his son unconscious, the girl got free and ran into the bathroom. Whitler called her back and told her to sit on his lap, which she obeyed.

Whitler then strangled his daughter, she said.

“I knew I wasn’t going to win the fight that was going on and I gave in and let him choke me unconscious,” she said. “I held my breath so I knew it would be easier so I wouldn’t have to choke as long.”

During testimony Monday morning, the son said his father's grip wasn’t initially tight on his neck, until police began banging on the door of the home.

“I started screaming and then he tightened his grip,” the boy said in a clear, calm voice. “I kept yelling, ‘Help, he’s down here strangling me.’”

Larimer County Sheriff's deputies shot James Whiter twice with a Taser before he released his grip, the son said. The boy and his sister were then taken to Medical Center of the Rockies, holding hands in the ambulance as rescuers administered oxygen and IVs.

The children’s testimony came one day after their mother spoke in the courtroom. 

James Whitler’s ex-wife confronted him in court Friday afternoon, describing to jurors how tension in her family grew in the week leading to the day she filed for divorce and her husband allegedly beat Allen to death.

Lisa Whitler said in the days before she filed for divorce and got a court-issued restraining order protecting herself and her children from James Whitler, her children on more than one occasion sent electronic “hate messages” to her. 

The voice and text messages were sent while the children were living with James Whitler, who moved back into the family home after living in an apartment for six months while the couple was separated, according to Lisa Whitler’s testimony. 

On Friday, prosecutors played a voice message for jurors during Lisa Whitler’s testimony where her son is heard saying “Dad has a hearing on Monday so we don’t have to see you anymore.”

It was that message from her son that convinced Lisa Whitler to deliver the divorce papers and restraining order to her husband the same day she filed for divorce, instead of the next day like she’d planned, she said.

Staff writers Trevor Hughes and Nate Taylor contributed to this report.


No comments: