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Hernando Today

Murder Trial To Begin

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By KYLE MARTIN

Hernando Today

Published: October 12, 2008

BROOKSVILLE - Betty Walker was frying chicken when the gun went off outside.

Boom.

Her daughter looked up from her supper plate: "What was that?"

Walker's son and three other men rushed into the doublewide trailer home, frantically hollering. Walker looked out the window to see someone lying at the bottom of the short steps leading into her home.

As she dialed 911 on her cell phone, her nephew, Joshua Langley, began yelling, "I wasn't here Aunt Betty; I wasn't here."

By the time she connected with an operator, everyone had left.

The operator directed Walker to check on the victim outside. She grabbed a flashlight and stepped outside into the winter darkness.

"He had threw up, he was gurgling and (had) one leg up in the air, just a shaking," Walker said in a recent deposition. "And then she (the operator) told me to go back in the house and stay there until police come."

As a certified nursing assistant, it was tough to walk away and not render aid, Walker recalled.

"It hurts me that it happened, period. Because I hate to see anybody lose their life like that," she said.

So what exactly happened the night of Dec. 4, 2006, outside Walker's home on Whitman Road?

That will be up to jurors to decide this week as they weigh the evidence against Langley, 32, who is charged with first-degree murder in connection with the death of 24-year-old Jac'Quez Jones. If convicted, the prosecution is seeking the death penalty.

Jones' death finished the particularly bloody year of 2006, which include three separate murders in October. Up until that point, it had been 25 months without a murder in Hernando County.
Depositions of the witnesses in the Langley case, including some key players and a jail-cell confession, were recently completed and included in his voluminous case file.

They provide a window into what to expect in the upcoming week and possible arguments both for the defense and prosecution.

The prosecution has the testimony of three people, not including the suspect, who witnessed the shooting. The general consensus is that the victim was killed over a money dispute.

"They were best friends, but they fell out," as witness Robert "Boo" Wright put it.

Wright was with the victim most of the day and accompanied him to Walker's rural home north of Brooksville, 22230 Whitman Road. When Jones showed up around 8 p.m., Langley's two cousins were sitting on the back porch steps.

They later told authorities that Langley was upset because Jones withheld money from him after a robbery, and Langley intended to "straighten him out," according to a report.

As Wright and the victim talked with the two witnesses, Langley came running out from a hiding spot, pointing a gun and hollering "don't move, don't move," according to Wright.

Accounts differ as to what happened next. An arrest affidavit says Langley pistol-whipped Jones first and then shot him in the face. Wright said in a deposition that Langley swung the cocked gun in Jones' direction and it fired.

The medical examiner's office determined that the bullet passed through Jones' right cheek and embedded in his brain. For all the differing accounts of that evening, their descriptions of the scene agree:

"Only thing I remember is seeing him and blood, that's it, just blood, just blood."

"... blood gushing everywhere."

"... pool of blood with some clothing beside it."

With Jones bleeding out on the back steps, everyone rushed inside. By the time 911 was called everyone had left again. Nathaniel Walker, a witness, would later be charged for tampering with evidence because he took the gun that killed Jones and threw it in a lake.

Former major case detective Steve Bishop, now a patrol officer in Denver, is on the witness list and describes in detail the hunt to find Langley.

Early in his deposition, Bishop says he "had many dealings" with Jones, along with the suspect and Nathaniel Walker. Their names frequently came up in connection with the South Brooksville drug trade, Bishop said.

A trail of clues and interviews led authorities across Hernando County and into Pasco County searching for Langley. A crime analyst would eventually track a signal from Langley's cell phone to Brunswick, Ga. The police department there arrested Langley as he walked out of the Seabreeze Motel and extradited him back to Hernando County.

Reporter Kyle Martin can be reached at 352-544-5271 or kmartin@hernandotoday.com.

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