By TRENT JACOBS
The Nacogdoches Daily Sentinel
Friday, October 02, 2009
NACOGDOCHES — In the fourth day of testimony in the trial of Kyle Barnhill, the jury handed down a unanimous guilty verdict for the murder of his wife, Melissa Kesinger Barnhill.
After both the prosecution and defense concluded their cases Thursday afternoon, the jury of four women and eight men took only about 20 minutes to deliver their decision to the court. The case promptly proceeded into the punishment phase, which is expected to last through Friday. Barnhill is eligible for up to 99 years in prison for the conviction.
Thursday's court proceedings also included emotional testimony from the defendant himself and from his young daughter, who told jurors of hearing the sound of shattered glass the night her mother died and finding her lifeless body on the floor of their Kings Row Street home last March. Melissa Barnhill was shot through her kitchen window as she prepared dinner for her two daughters. She and her husband were going through a divorce at the time.
Once the guilty verdict had been returned, the first witness prosecutors called up during the initial punishment phase was Melissa's father, James Kesinger of Lufkin, who told jurors about the character of his daughter, who was also the mother of two of his grandchildren.
"She was a blessing to us from the very beginning," Kesinger tearfully said of his slain daughter. "Her mother hadn't had anything but boys until she was born. She (his wife) always wanted a daughter, and I prayed to the Lord that I could have a daughter."
Kesinger said his daughter was very smart as small child and was always looking to help others, especially family members. He said Melissa, who was a registered nurse at the Nacogdoches Medical Center at the time of her death, was introduced into the medical profession through her mother, who fell ill with cancer when Melissa was just 9.
The last time Kesinger said he saw his daughter was about two weeks before her husband shot her with a rifle through a kitchen window at her home in Nacogdoches. Melissa was visiting her father with her two daughters. Right as she was leaving to head back home, Kesinger said Melissa turned around and told him for the first time that she had filed for divorce from Kyle. He said he thought she hadn't already told him she was divorcing her husband because "she didn't want me to get into trouble."
The last time he spoke with Melissa was the night of her murder. Stricken with pneumonia, Kesinger said Melissa had told him she would bring him some medicine later that evening at around 8 p.m. But he called her back and left a voice message telling her that it was too late, and she should wait until the next day. She didn't call back. About two hours later Kesinger said he received a phone call from Melissa's church pastor telling him his daughter had been killed.
"She was a good mother, and she loved her children dearly — that's one of the hardest things of all," he said. "Her smallest daughter — my granddaughter — was at my house the week before last, and had another little friend come spend the night with us. She looked at Melissa's picture on the wall and told this little girl, 'You see this picture? That's my momma.' And I thought then, that's all she's ever going to have in her life (of her mother), a little picture."
Before the guilty verdict was handed down, Barnhill's 11-year-old daughter took the stand Thursday morning to give emotional testimony against her father.
Kyla told the prosecution that on the night of the murder, she was reading a book for school at home when she heard glass shatter, after which her younger sister, who was 3 at the time, excitedly called for her to come to the kitchen. There, Kyla found her mother lying in a pool of blood, dying from a gunshot wound to the neck.
Speaking through tears, Kyla said her first thought upon seeing her mother on the kitchen floor was that she accidently slipped and stabbed herself. She immediately called family friends for help, but when she got no answer, Kyla ran out the garage door to call for help, she said.
"I opened the garage and started screaming," Kyla said. "I just stepped out and started yelling — something like 'help me.'"
When neighbor Tom Brainard responded, Kyla she said she took him inside the kitchen, where he called police. He told them Melissa had apparently been shot. Kyla said it was not until Brainard's call to police that she realized her mother had not slipped, but rather she had been shot. Several jurors and others watching the trial in the gallery were seen crying during this portion of the testimony, while Kyle displayed little outward emotion.
Kyla said she knelt down next to her mother and futilely attempted to save her life by pressing a towel against her wound.
"I got a towel and started trying to stop the bleeding, but it never stopped," she said.
Brainard eventually took both young girls out of the kitchen and into his home. Kyla testified she had her mother's blood on her hands and was hesitant to wash it off, because she wanted to remember her mother, she said.
Kyla said she had someone take a photograph of her bloody hands so that she would not forget the moment.
When asked by District Attorney Nicole LoStracco who she believed, at the time, had shot her mother, Kyla said, "I kind of thought my dad did it."
Following Kyla's testimony, the prosecution rested its case. Then, in an unexpected move, the defendant went against his attorney's advice and took the stand to admonish LoStracco for making his daughter testify.
Barnhill's attorney, Bill Agnew, surrendered his right to an opening statement and began his defense by asking Barnhill why he wanted to take the stand.
"Because, we've been sitting here for a good three-and-half days, listening to really ironclad, irrefutable evidence against me, and when they chose to put my 11-year-old daughter on the stand, it was totally unnecessary," Barnhill said. "They made her relive this traumatic event.
"I'm sorry that she had to ever live through it in the first place," he said. "But her coming back in here to relive this event, plus condemn her father, was really over the top — unnecessary. It was not needed to convict me."
Barnhill was on the stand for more than 45 minutes before the lunchtime recess, during which time his lawyer allowed him to go into a lengthy explanation of the circumstances that led up to him shooting his wife. Barnhill implied and stated multiple times Melissa had been having an affair. He also testified that through their divorce proceedings, he had been treated poorly by Melissa's attorney, Jim LoStracco, who is the district attorney's husband and said there was no justification for the protective order that Jim LoStracco had obtained during the divorce proceedings on behalf of Melissa.
During the divorce, Barnhill said many of the church members had "rallied around Melissa" without knowing "the full story," he said. During the recorded interview, Barnhill expressed regret for the families affected by his actions.
After the recess Barnhill took the stand for another 40 minutes where he was cross examined by the prosecution. On the stand he admitted to killing his wife.
Prior to the shooting he also admitted to sending numerous veiled threats via text messages to Melissa during the course of their divorce proceedings. Barnhill also said when he was delivered the notice of the final divorce proceeding that would make the separation complete he quickly left work and drove to Bullard where he purchased the murder weapon. While Barnhill said he remembered driving back from Bullard he said he has no memory of actually rasing the rifle, aiming it at his soon to be ex-wife and pulling the trigger, nor making it back to his car. He did say he remembered driving to the University Park Plaza and entering the woods around Lanana Creek with the weapon but does not recall breaking the back window of his truck trying to get the nearly six-foot long rifle out of the cab nor tossing the weapon into the area around the creek. Barnhill also said he did not remember driving back to his place of business, Zest-E-Burger located along South Street, but did maintain he was robbed there.
Barnhill said the morning after he killed his wife he borrowed a friends car and drove back to the Zest-E-Burger, then to a gas station where he bought a copy of The Daily Sentinel. On the front page, Barnhill said he read the paper had printed he was the alleged killer.
"I hadn't even really thought of the events of the previous night but as I was reading the front page of The Daily Sentinel it said the 'alleged killer was her husband.' Or very close to that — it did say 'her alleged killer' and that's when I left," he said.
Barnhill said he was "frightened" after reading he was a likely suspect and purchased maps of Mexico and Central America. But with very little money and no identification Barnhill said he had a lot of trouble getting a motel room in the Texas border town of Eagle Pass where he said he spent over three days. When he was finally arrested in front of a public library, Kyle said he gave a false name to authorities and would have been happier to be apprehended after he had a chance to check his e-mail, which ultimately was how officials tracked him down.
It was revealed in court by the prosecution that Barnhill may have tried to kill himself while in the Nacogdoches County Jail and even plotted an escape plan sometime in early September. Barnhill admitted to delivering a note to the jail's nurse that asked her to help him escape with "a little outside assistance." Since then, Barnhill has been on lockdown at the jail and has not been permitted any recreational time he said.
Barnhill said he did not cross the border because he did not want his family to suffer from him being a fugitive but in later testimony under examination by the prosecution, he said that after he had been incarcerated he was fine with putting his family through an escape attempt and living on the lamb. He said he changed his mind because he was not happy that his trial was not moved from Nacogdoches County and that the lead prosecutor was married to Melissa's divorce attorney.
When asked how he felt about the situation by his own attorney Barnhill said, "I'm not totally certain that the severity of it has hit me yet. It's mind boggling. I think it's just, it's almost like it was an out of body experience. I can not fathom that I did this." He added that he now feels "sad" not just for himself of the wife he killed but also for his children. "It's a tragedy," Barnhill said.
Also testifying Thursday was KTRE television reporter Jena Johnson, who conducted a phone interview with Barnhill while he was in the Nacogdoches County jail following his transfer back from Eagle Pass. The court heard the full 15-minute interview between Johnson and Barnhill in where he blamed The Daily Sentinel's initial reporting on the killing for his reasoning for trying to flee across the border.
A forensic scientist also testified, linking the bullet fragments found at the scene to the murder weapon, a antique Russian infantry rifle, discovered later by a man walking near Lanana Creek behind University Park Plaza. Another forensic scientist gave testimony that linked the defendant's DNA to DNA found inside one of the dark gloves that police recovered in their investigations of Barnhill's truck and the area along Lanana Creek where the murder weapon was found.
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