PALMER -- A jury on Thursday began deliberating the murder case against Benjamin Wilson, the 31-year-old accused of shooting 28-year-old Leticia Faller in a Butte parking lot last November.
Wilson shot Faller in the head the evening of Nov. 9 in the parking lot of the Green Store, a convenience store and gas station along the Old Glenn Highway. He later told investigators that Faller lunged into his pickup with a knife. Prosecutors say he sent a barrage of angry, threatening texts to Faller the day she died. Court documents show Faller's sister gave Alaska State Troopers a letter about the care of her 7-year-old daughter in case anything happened.
What's in dispute, attorneys said in closing statements Tuesday in Palmer Superior Court, was whether Wilson acted intentionally or in self-defense.
Was he trying to split up Faller and her longtime boyfriend, Torin Ford, and went too far, sending her into a rage of fear and frustration, as the prosecution contends?
Or, as his public defender claims, did Wilson create an elaborate kidnapping scheme to get Faller off methamphetamine but misjudged her behavior after a six-day drug binge?
Wilson was indicted last year on charges of first- and second-degree murder, manslaughter, third-degree assault, coercion and kidnapping.
He has remained jailed since, awaiting the trial that began last week.
A prosecutor told jurors not to let Wilson's self-described trait of being "good at stupid" -- as he reportedly said in a text to Faller -- sway them in their decision.
Faller feared for her life the entire afternoon of her final day after getting threatening messages from someone she identified as "Big Ben," assistant district attorney Lindsey Burton told jurors. "She cried. She cried in the fetal position on the floor and begged Ben to leave her alone."
Wilson is 6-foot-1 and about 300 pounds. Court documents filed with the initial charges spell out the threatening texts, including one that said: "I can't help your family if you don't talk to me. You have nothing to fear from me. But (I) don't know how long I can make you 'OK' with my people. And my people want me to go back to work."
Wilson also sent a text around 8 p.m. the day Faller died, telling her, "We got Torin," and asking if she'd call him back now.
Faller viewed Wilson as "an enforcer," though there's no evidence he was affiliated with the Hells Angels or drug gangs, Burton said.
What he did have, she continued, was an interest in Faller. Wilson and Faller had a couple of sexual encounters when Ford was working in Seattle, Ford testified Monday. Ford and Faller had a three-year relationship. Several witnesses testified to her heavy methamphetamine habit.
Wilson wanted to show Faller that he was a better man than Ford, Burton said. The day of the texts, Wilson picked up Ford, blindfolded him and bound his wrists and ankles with duct tape, and drove him to a remote spot, where he pressed him for information on meth cooks and marijuana grows in the area. Ford gave up several names, she said. Someone punched Ford in the face and Wilson grabbed him and they left.
The pair drove him back to the Green Store -- or to another house and then the store; Ford's story varied -- where Faller pulled in for the final confrontation after getting the text about Ford, Burton said. Faller sent one back: "You'd better not f---ing hurt him Ben."
Faller, by then "scared and madder than hell," pulled into the parking lot to meet them and started screaming at Wilson, the prosecutor said.
"He realizes she's going to choose Torin every time," she said. Wilson, dressed neatly in street clothes and sporting a fresh haircut, nodded.
As the prosecutor described it, Wilson then put his Ruger Security Six .357 revolver to Faller's head, exerted 11 pounds of pressure on the trigger and fired a shot into her temple. Ford testified he started to run, and Wilson pointed the gun at him before driving off.
Wilson called 911 from his residence nearby but only because he realized two people he knew had seen the whole thing, Burton said. "This is not a self-defense case. This is stone-cold murder."
Not at all, Wilson's attorney countered.
Faller had so much meth in her system when she died that it measured four times the maximum nontoxic dose, public defender Jeff Bradley told the jury. She hadn't slept in six days.
"She lunged through Mr. Wilson's passenger door with the clear intent to stab him," Bradley said. Wilson didn't want to hurt Faller; he loved her, he said. "He was attempting to help her with the problem of meth abuse."
He acted on instinct inside the truck, and left the scene because he was afraid that Faller's "meth-dealing family" would come running. Burton later said there was no evidence to support that claim about Faller's family.
Turning himself in later brought the "odds of getting shot by the police" way down, Bradley said.
As for the "fake kidnapping thing," the public defender said, it was all an act.
Wilson was trying to be noble and help Faller kick meth by making her think her connections would turn on her because Ford gave up their names, Bradley said. So he contrived the whole scheme but didn't even blindfold Ford well enough to leave a mark. Wilson hoped that a sober Faller might realize she could do better than Ford, he said. "The plan, in hindsight, was not the most brilliant thing."
But that didn't excuse Faller's behavior, Bradley continued.
He called her "a meth freak who lunged into his truck with a knife in her hand." Wilson shot her, not at close range as the prosecution said but at a distance of 1 to 3 feet, Bradley said.
The shooting was "absolutely justified," he said.
A videotape of Ford's interview with an Alaska State Troopers investigator caught him in what Bradley listed as numerous lies: At first he said he wasn't threatened by Wilson, or even kidnapped; he didn't see any of Wilson's texts, or he was aware of them and went to find him; Wilson pointed a gun at him or he didn't.
Bradley said the strength of Ford's character spoke directly to the strength of the state's case.
"Torin has got all the credibility of a televangelist stumbling out of a brothel" with cocaine on his lip, he said, before reeling off the list of alleged lies. "Torin Ford is a damned liar."