Published: February 15, 2006 02:38 pm      

‘Normal’ day ended in murder for Camm family

Defense blood experts up later this week

BOONVILLE — If Kim Camm was preparing to leave her husband and he was planning to kill her, neither indicated life was anything but normal on the day of the murders.

That’s the testimony the jury in David Camm’s murder trial heard Tuesday as the defense began presenting its case.

It was an emotional day in court as Nelson Lockhart, David Camm’s uncle, described the night of the

murders. Lockhart, a former Kentucky State Police Officer, cried on the stand as he talked about finding the bodies of his niece and her children.

Several jurors wiped their eyes during the testimony.

Camm, 41, is on trial for a second time for the September 2000 shooting deaths of his 36-year-old

wife and two children, Brad, 7, and Jill, 5. The family was murdered in their garage upon returning home one evening. Camm’s 2002 conviction was overturned.

The first defense witness was Jan Poyser, a Georgetown decorator who attended church with the Camm family. She testified that three weeks before the murders Kim Camm hired her to redecorate the master bedroom she and David shared.

Poyser also told jurors about the last time she saw the family — after Brad’s Bible class on the night before the murders. The family seemed normal, and healthy. The children, she said, ran down a flight

of stairs.

Prosecutors theorize that David Camm molested his daughter a day or so before the murders and then killed the family when he was discovered.

State witnesses testified that the girl’s genital injuries would have been so painful she wouldn’t have been able to run and play normally. But the defense maintains Jill was molested at the time of the murders, at the hands of Camm’s convicted co-defendant Charles Boney.

Witnesses Karla Farnsley, David Camm’s first cousin, and Lisa Brown, a customer of the company David

worked for, also told about routine encounters they had with members of the family in the 24 hours before the murders.

Farnsley recalled stopping by the Camm home the night before the deaths. David was lying on the couch watching TV, while Kim bathed the children. Jill was splashing around in the tub, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary, she said.

Just hours before the murders, Brown testified David Camm called her to confirm an appointment for the following day. Camm, who was working for United Dynamics, called Brown at 5:30 p.m. to confirm the time he would be arriving to give her an estimate for work she needed done at her home.

By 8 p.m., according to the medical examiner’s estimate, the family was dead.

Lockhart told the jury he was at his father’s house, across the street from the Camm home, watching TV when his nephew banged on the door, calling for his help. “Someone’s killed my family ... they’re all dead,” David Camm screamed to his uncle, before turning and sprinting back across the rural road.

When Lockhart arrived,

Camm was bent down beside his son, appearing to give him CPR, and yelling for Lockhart to check on Jill in the vehicle.

Soon, police cars were arriving.

Under cross examination, Lockhart told Floyd County Prosecutor Keith Henderson he didn’t find it strange Camm stopped performing CPR on his son to run across the street for help, even though he had already called 911.

Henderson pointed out that in Camm’s decade as a state trooper he had been trained, as all law enforcement officers are, to continue CPR until help arrives.

The prosecutor also asked Lockhart if he, a former law enforcement officer, found it odd that one of the first things Camm did was establish an alibi by telling his uncle he was playing basketball when his

family was killed.

“I thought it was more he was talking to himself, fussing at himself for playing basketball when he should have been with them,” Lockhart said.

Afterward, when other officers described Camm’s behavior as strange, Lockhart said, “Dave, at times, was like a zombie. He was just walking around and pacing and staring off in space.” He said Camm also

screamed and beat on a vehicle, in despair.

Court adjourned early Tuesday afternoon when the defense “exhausted their witness supply” in the words of Judge Robert Aylsworth. Due to scheduling conflicts with a number of expert witnesses coming in from out of town, there were no other witnesses lined up to testify Tuesday.

Later this week, the defense plans to call blood stain experts Paul Kish and Bart Epstein to the stand. They are expected to dispute the prosecution’s experts, saying that the blood found on Camm’s shirt was transferred there when he brushed up against his daughter at the crime scene. State experts contend it was high-velocity blood spatter on Camm’s shirt, which meant he had to have been within 4 feet of the victims when they were shot.