Violent Crimes
A Question of Murder

In the rainy predawn darkness of April 4, 1985, Delbert Ray Edmonds tumbled awkwardly to the ground near his camper and slowly bled to death from a gunshot wound to his stomach.

A grand jury indicted William Westbay for the murder of Edmonds. A trial date was set, and then ------- nothing. That is where it stopped and has been in limbo since 1988.

The thought of Delbert watching his life wash away in the rain haunts his siblings and children, who say they have been distraught at the delayed justice.

A Huge Crack in the Justice System

By Jason Riley and R.G. Dunlop
The Courier-Journal
Posted 7/12/03

It rained intensely all night on April 14, 1985, in the rural Kentucky county of Bullitt. The 33-year-old Delbert Edmonds and his friends stayed inside the camper trailer having drinks and playing cards.

By pre-dawn Edmonds was dead -- struck at pointblank range by a blast from a .410 gauge shotgun that riddled his liver, pancreas, and kidneys.

It's been 17 years since his death and his family is still begging the commonwealth attorneys to prosecute the indicted suspect, William H. Westbay, now 49, an itinerant scrap metal collector.

Westbay, who was indicted by the grand jury, counters that Edmonds committed suicide and that is why the commonwealth attorney has not prosecuted him.

The Victim: Delbert Ray Edmonds

Friends and family say Edmonds, was a good man and well liked by family, friends, and people in the community. He was a divorced father of four, who had purchased that day, Easter presents for his children, but they would be delivered by someone else.

According to Bullitt Commonwealth's Attorney Mike Mann, toxicology tests showed that Edmonds was legally drunk when he died, struck at point-blank range by a blast from a .410-gauge shotgun that riddled his liver, pancreas and kidneys.

Two officials involved in the case and who likely would have been called as witnesses had William H. Westbay's case ever gone to trial strongly disagree on the likelihood of Edmonds' death being a suicide.

Edmonds' case remains open and Westbay, has yet to stand trial. Equally, charges have not been dropped, either.

The Accused: William H. Westbay

Westbay, now 49, has been free on bond since shortly after the shooting in 1985, and says Edmonds killed himself. Westbay saw his case removed from the trial docket in Bullitt Circuit Court in 1988, by prosecutors who didn't think they had enough evidence to convict him.

Yet, they have never dismissed the charges, or, officially declared Edmonds' death a suicide. The case is just in limbo. Westbay still has a charge of murder against him, but the prosecutors have not pursued a trial.

"They (the state) have no evidence," Westbay said. "They ain't worried about it, I ain't worried about it."

Two Families Torn

Because the case has never been resolved, Westbay and Edmonds' family say they are in living nightmares.

Prosecutors say they were reluctant to dismiss the case, partly to avoid angering or upsetting Edmonds' family but also in the faint hope that additional evidence might surface.

As a result, Westbay and Edmonds' family have been left dangling in a legal limbo with bitter feelings toward each other.

No jury has ever heard the contradictory evidence in the case, including the testimony of two officials who have starkly differing views on whether Edmonds' death was murder or a suicide.

Bullitt Commonwealth's Attorney Mike Mann, who has allowed the case to languish for the past decade, reviewed with the newspaper some of the testimony heard by the grand jury that indicted Westbay.

Mann agreed that some unresolved issues and apparent inconsistencies did surface in the testimony, but disputed the notion that unanswered questions and conflicting accounts of what occurred warranted taking the case to trial and letting jurors decide Westbay's guilt or innocence.

The case should have been dismissed years ago, Mann said, adding that he now intends to ask Bullitt Circuit Judge Thomas Waller to drop the murder charge.

"If you don't have enough evidence, you shouldn't be prosecuting a case," said Mann, who became commonwealth's attorney in December 1992 and who also served as an assistant for 2-1/2 years in the late 1980s to then-Commonwealth's Attorney Waller, who is now the circuit judge.

Mann acknowledged that he never sought to dismiss the indictment even though no new evidence has surfaced and the investigation is not active, because Edmonds' family wanted it prosecuted -- or at least kept open.

"That's probably something I shouldn't have agreed to," Mann said.

Asked if it was fair to Westbay to have a murder charge hanging over his head for more than 17 years if prosecutors thought from the beginning that the chances of obtaining a conviction were remote, Mann replied: "Probably not."

Westbay's murder case is one of more than 200 Bullitt County criminal cases mired in inactivity for periods ranging from three years to nearly two decades, an investigation by The Courier-Journal found. The Edmonds case is among the oldest pending cases in the huge backlog, and apparently the only one involving a suspected homicide.

Judge Waller agreed in an interview that he and others involved in Westbay's prosecution have always doubted the strength of the evidence.

But Waller was unable to explain why he, as commonwealth's attorney, didn't do something to resolve the case -- try it, negotiate a plea agreement or ask that the case be dismissed. A prosecutor can ask the court to dismiss an indictment for a variety of reasons, including insufficient evidence to convict the defendant.

"I recall that case because I recommended (to the grand jury) against an indictment," the judge said. "I don't remember the facts. I just remember that I didn't think we had a case that we could take to the jury."

Lack of Closure

Without a trial, questions unanswered

Westbay was released from jail on $20,000 bond 11 days after the shooting. Although Westbay has since pleaded guilty to a half-dozen traffic offenses, he apparently has not been accused of any other violent crime. In a brief interview, he said that while he would prefer to be rid of the murder charge, it doesn't bother him.

"They (the state) have no evidence. They ain't worried about it, I ain't worried about it." But his family tells a different story. They say it has been cruel to force him to live with the stigma of a murder rap when he is innocent, they said.

The lack of closure has left members of Edmonds' family feeling angry, frustrated, and helpless.

Linda Fox, one of Edmonds' six sisters, said she and her mother made repeated trips to Waller's office in Shepherdsville whenever a hearing was scheduled in the case during the 80s. But nothing of consequence ever happened, Fox said. Usually, the hearings were postponed.

After Westbay pleaded not guilty to the murder charge on July 15, 1985, his case was set for trial eight times between Nov. 26 of that year and Dec. 15, 1988, court records show. Each time, it was continued.

"We tried to push it," Fox said. "But they said there wasn't enough evidence."

Dana Fudge, Edmonds' oldest child, who was 10 years old when her father died, said having no resolution to the case always bothered her. "I'm 28 years old now, and I still think about it and cry. I haven't stopped missing him."

Because Westbay was never tried, several unresolved issues still surround Edmonds' death -- issues of the sort that a jury would have considered had prosecutors chosen to aggressively pursue the case. Foremost among them: Who fired the fatal shot?

According to Mann, toxicology tests showed that Edmonds was legally drunk when he died, and Westbay also had been drinking heavily with him in the trailer that the two men shared.

The shotgun was not tested for fingerprints because Westbay told investigators that several people had handled it. Westbay was not tested for the presence of gunshot residue because he said he had been out in the rain and had washed his hands.

No gunshot residue was found on Edmonds' body either. Mann speculated that it could have been washed away in the rain.

Westbay told investigators that Edmonds had been depressed over his inability to find steady work, and that Edmonds woke him to say he had shot himself. Westbay said he replied, "Sure you did," and went back to sleep.

Other unresolved issues include the fact that neither Westbay nor anyone in the area acknowledged hearing a gunshot -- a fact that at least one grand juror found curious. Police were not called to the scene until several hours after the shooting. A relative of Westbay's, who made the call, said she was told Edmonds needed medical attention because he was choking.

Members of Edmonds' family vehemently reject the notion that Edmonds committed suicide, saying Edmonds had made peace with his ex wife, loved his children and was looking forward to the approaching holiday.

"I know my dad would definitely not shoot himself," Fudge said. "There was no way he could leave his four kids. He was not despondent about anything at the time"

She and other family members also expressed doubt that Edmonds could have committed suicide with a shotgun because he was a small man, just 5 feet 6 inches tall; they believe his arms were too short to have reached the trigger with the gun barrel pointed at his stomach.

Two officials involved in the case and who likely would have been called as witnesses had Westbay's case ever gone to trial strongly disagree on the likelihood of Edmonds' death being a suicide.

Former Bullitt County Coroner Gayle Troutman said he is convinced that Edmonds did not kill himself.

"I've never seen anyone commit suicide and walk away from it," said Troutman, who estimated that he investigated more than 300 deaths, including 50 or more homicides, before he retired in 1996 after 25 years as coroner. "If I found him in that yard, and the gun was inside (a gun was found in the trailer, leaning against a wall), there's no way he could have walked out that far. A shotgun's gonna tear you up."

Troutman also said that while he recalled cases in which people committed suicide by putting the gun to their chest and pushing the trigger with a toe, doing so invariably left telltale marks on the foot.

"I don't recall that happening. I'm sure it didn't," Troutman said.

Question of Suicide

Physician disputes ex-coroner's comments

Informed of Troutman's comments, Dr. Barbara Weakley-Jones, Kentucky's assistant chief medical examiner, who performed the autopsy on Edmonds, said: "That's the difference between a medical examiner-physician and a (lay) coroner."

Weakley-Jones said that while she was unable to say conclusively whether Edmonds killed himself or was murdered, her findings were consistent with a suicide.

Disputing virtually every point Troutman made, Weakley-Jones said it is indeed possible for the victim of a shotgun wound to walk around, and even talk.

"I've seen them shot in the heart and walk 100 yards," Weakley-Jones said. "It only got his liver, pancreas and kidneys. He could have survived for at least a little while, 20 minutes perhaps. It is possible to hold a shotgun yourself and shoot yourself in the abdomen. You can set the stock of the gun on the ground and pull the trigger with your thumb."

Weakley-Jones said other factors arguing for suicide included the fact that Edmonds was shot at very close range, with the gun barrel an inch or less from his stomach.

"That's more consistent with suicide, because most people won't let you walk up to them and blow them away," she said. "Contact wounds don't always mean suicide, but it's more likely than in a homicide."

Also noting the gun found in the trailer, Weakley-Jones said: "In a homicide, the shooter generally takes the weapon."

In the absence of a trial, such assertions and arguments are merely academic, because they have not been subjected to cross-examination, considered in the light of other expert testimony and weighed by a jury.

Meanwhile, Westbay continues to live in the same neighborhood where the shooting occurred, at the end of a gravel driveway just off Trappers Road. Access to his home is barred by a closed iron gate and is further discouraged by a "Private Property Keep Out" sign.

"If it takes time, it takes time," Westbay said of the case. "I didn't do it, so it doesn't bother me."

Edmonds' family says it bothers them because suicide does not fit his personality plus why did he spend all that money to lavish his kids with Easter presents, talking about how excited he was to give them to the kids, if he was planning a suicide?

Dodge counters that Weakley-Jones' argument about the gun being so close to Edmonds is: "The two men had been drinking. If dad was as drunk as they say, then it's conceivable that Westbay could have had the element of surprise on my dad."

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