Blountville, TN: Retrial begins for man charged in wife's slaying

By Claire Galofaro


By the time dozens of potential jurors filed into a Sullivan County courtroom Monday morning, Randy Keith Graybeal was seated at the defendant’s table, his back toward them. It wasn’t until they were called, one by one, to the jury box that they caught a glimpse of his face – an unnerving result of the day two years ago when he shot his wife dead, then blew his own face off with a 12-gauge shotgun.

By the time dozens of potential jurors filed into a Sullivan County courtroom Monday morning, Randy Keith Graybeal was seated at the defendant’s table, his back toward them. It wasn’t until they were called, one by one, to the jury box that they caught a glimpse of his face – an unnerving result of the day two years ago when he shot his wife dead, then blew his own face off with a 12-gauge shotgun.

Angela Dawn Graybeal, 38, was shot in the stomach. She died on the living room floor hours before anyone found them. He was lying feet away, still alive, but severely injured.

The Oct. 28, 2008, shooting at their Timber Ridge Road home in Bluff City ended a short and volatile marriage that began crumbling that July when Graybeal filed for divorce.

In June, Graybeal, now 56, was tried for first-degree murder. The jury could not reach a unanimous decision and the judge declared a mistrial. They were not deciding his guilt – he admits to shooting his wife. They deliberated whether it was premeditated and clear-headed, both requirements for a first-degree murder conviction.

The defense argues it was an act of passion; that Graybeal was a depressed man pushed to the brink by an adulterous wife and should be charged with a lesser offense like voluntary manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide.

It took attorneys several hours Monday to whittle down dozens in the jury pool to just 13: five women and eight men charged with deciding whether Graybeal willfully killed his wife or was caught in a fog of blind rage.

“This is a case of passion, pure and simple passion,” said his defense attorney, Rick Spivey, in his opening comments. “It’s about a man who’s been disrespected, about a man who feels less than a man.”

But prosecutors paint him as an obsessive and controlling husband, suspicious if his wife got home from work a few minutes late. He was indignant that she insisted on living in her own home in Hampton, Tenn., and, weeks before he killed her, boasted to a hunting partner that he ought to go ahead and pull the trigger, prosecutors said.

His second trial started Monday much like the first. Graybeal sat quietly in the same tan-colored suit that hung from his thin frame. As the trial began, he muttered just two barely discernible words: “not guilty.”

Sullivan County prosecutors Kaylin Render and Kent Chitwood called the same first witness. Olin Morris lived next door to the couple and was likely Randy Graybeal’s best friend. The two talked every day, he said, and usually saw each other just as often.

He sold the couple 15 acres of land in May 2008, deeded to the married couple, to build a new house. They never did.

Graybeal confided in Morris about his tumultuous marriage. After his wife moved out, Graybeal installed a surveillance camera on their garage, aimed at the side door, and sometimes watched the house for signs of his wife through binoculars on Morris’ front porch a quarter mile away, he testified.

Graybeal was an accomplished, hard-working stone mason, Morris testified. As his marriage disintegrated, he stopped working.

Angela Graybeal was killed on a Tuesday. The Saturday before, Morris, a white-haired man with rosy cheeks, said he drove Randy Graybeal to her house in Hampton. He waited in the truck for a while, then went inside to find a happy couple sitting snug on the couch. They talked about reconciling. Randy Graybeal decided to stay the night and sent Morris home. That was the last time he saw his friend’s real face.

There were several phone calls over the next few days. Morris said he learned that the pair went to see a preacher for counseling. He thought things were looking up. But by Tuesday morning, a “distraught” Graybeal told him it wasn’t going well. That night, there were no lights on at the Graybeal house and Morris said he got worried. He called 15 times with no answer. The next morning, he was on his way to breakfast with a friend and decided to stop and check, he testified.

First, he went to an outbuilding where he heard music playing, but the building was padlocked. Then he went to the side door.

“There was a tremendous amount of blood,” he said. “It had already turned brown. I knew something bad happened.”

The blood was splattered along the driveway and up to the door handle. He pressed the door open and, in the center of the room, he saw Angela Graybeal lying on the floor in a pool of dried blood.

He ran back to the car where his friend was still sitting.

“I told my friend that Randy had killed Angela,” he testified Monday, though Spivey objected when prosecutors asked why he immediately came to that conclusion.

Morris called police and ran to the mailbox to get the address. Meanwhile, his friend sat scared in the car. The bloody side door of the house slammed shut and, not knowing what was happening inside, the friend scooted to the driver’s seat to speed away.

Sullivan County Sheriff’s Deputy Rick Rumley was the first officer to arrive. As prosecutors showed photos of the tidy house and manicured lawn, Rumley testified that, as he pushed the side door open, the first thing he saw was Randy Graybeal lying on the floor with, as Spivey described it, “his whole face completely exploded.” A shotgun was on the floor just behind him.

The next picture was of Angela Graybeal, dead just feet away, next to a coffee table cluttered with remote controls and drinking cups. She was wearing a white bra and jeans, unbuttoned, with the area around the zipper soaked in blood. Her red sweater clung only around her right wrist.

Later, at Johnson City Medical Center, Graybeal told Morris, that his wife came after him with a butcher knife and he wrestled it from her, though only her blood was found on the blade. Then he shot her and immediately shot himself, Morris testified Monday. Graybeal told him he remembered nothing after that.

Prosecutors also called Michael Landore, who barely knew Graybeal. They went dove hunting once together and, nearly a year after Graybeal shot his wife, detectives paid Landore a visit.

While they were all drinking that day, Landore testified Monday, Graybeal started talking about his wife, saying he “ought to” shoot her, Landore recalled.

Criminal Court Judge Robert Montgomery expects the trial to last through Wednesday or Thursday.

Meanwhile, Graybeal still resides at the Sullivan County jail. Five rows behind him, four family members sat through Monday’s proceedings and said a dozen more were potential witnesses in the lobby.

Graybeal was one of six children, said his aunt, Paulette Miller. He was affectionate and loving, and they couldn’t imagine that he committed such a horrific crime.

“He was my doll, my pet,” Miller said, telling of their childhood. She was eight years his senior.

“I’ve just always prayed for him,” said another aunt who declined to give her name. “I just wish – I don’t know what I wish – that God will just be with him and help him. Never in this world could I imagine this. You get this sick feeling in your gut, it’s a gut-wrenching experience.”

Just yards away sat two women dressed in red – red for the sweater Angela Graybeal died in, red for her blood and red for the color they say her husband never let her wear. There were more red-clad women outside, waiting to be called as witnesses. Among them was Angela Graybeal’s daughter, now seven months pregnant with a little girl named Chloe.

Angela Graybeal’s mother, Diane Hopkins, sat through all four days of the first trial.

“He wouldn’t look at the pictures of her,” she said of Graybeal. “When they show the pictures of Angela, he refuses to look. I think he should be made to look at what he did to her.”

Hopkins called him “a monster” and she’s taken to the lobby for the second go-round.

“I don’t think that you should have to go through this the first time, much less the second,” said Angela Graybeal’s aunt, Maria Peltier. “To see those kind of pictures – I’m searching for the word – it’s hurtful. It’s like she’s on trial, but not here to defend herself. What justifies killing someone?”