KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — One victim was found shot to death in her bed. The second appeared to have been hit after the killer busted his way into her bedroom, perhaps moments after her futile call to summon help from Knoxville police.
Millie Blackwell and Barbara Rogers were two of the three victims prosecutors say Desmon Rhea, now 27, shot to death early March 8, 2020, in the rented house they shared at 6629 Trousdale Road.
Friday marked the second day of testimony in Rhea's trial in Knox County Criminal Court Judge Scott Green's courtroom. Prosecutors are slowly presenting evidence about the killings and what proved to be a very violent night in West Knoxville.
Testimony continues Monday.
Knox County Deputy District Attorney General Leland Price and Assistant District Attorney General Cameron Williams say Rhea also murdered Blackwell's daughter, Juliana White, who he'd been seeing. She, too, was killed early March 8, 2020, her body dumped near Division and Liberty streets in the middle of the night.
It was only after her body was discovered that police realized something might be wrong at the Trousdale house, where White and Rhea lived with the two older women.
Defense attorney Wade Davies represents Rhea and has been slowly raising questions and picking out discrepancies this week during state witness testimony.
Rogers had her own upstairs bedroom in the split-level home on Trousdale. Testimony and crime scene photos so far have shown she made a distressed 911 call from the home about 12:50 a.m. March 8. She wanted police to know she thought there'd been intruders and shots fired in the house.
The call ended with an abrupt noise, after which she no longer responded to the operator.
Knoxville Police Department crime scene technician Bethany Simmons guided jurors Friday through her work processing the house in the hours after the killings.
Photos showed someone had forced their way into Rogers' room, splintering wood in the doorframe. Photos showed Rogers' body slumped against a wall on the carpet, a stray metal piece from the damaged bedroom door by her body.
Also found in the room were three .45-caliber shell casings and a Ruger magazine with two live rounds, Simmons said. Missing from the room: any kind of telephone, testimony showed.
Blackwell was found shot in her nearby bedroom in her bed, as if she'd been sleeping when the killer pulled the trigger. One shell casing was found on her bed and another was found on the floor, Simmons testified.
One of the bullets ended up passing through the head board of her bed and penetrating the wall, leaving a hole visible from outside the house.
Later, authorities would find a bullet fragment with a bit of hair and what appeared to be blood on it in the upstairs living room, testimony showed Friday. It's not clear yet how it got there.
Downstairs, where White and sometimes Rhea lived, the living space was a mess of abandoned takeout food containers, drink cups, clothes, cigarette butts and other miscellaneous items. Eight .40-caliber bullets were found in a box.
Simmons also testified she processed a rented Nissan Sentra that Rhea was thought to have been driving the night of the murders. His driver's license and debit cards were found in a wallet under the floormat on the driver's side.
She said she tested and got a positive indication of blood for a sample taken in the front passenger seat area. On cross-examination by Davies, she acknowledged separate TBI testing that proved negative for blood.
Police believe White was shot in the car, which had been rented out to White, and then dumped in the area of Liberty and Division streets. A 911 caller reported seeing her body there about 4:36 a.m. that day, previous testimony has shown.
Inside the Nissan, authorities also found a food receipt from a McDonald's on Cedar Bluff Road dated March 8, 2020. It was time-stamped 4:12 a.m., according to testimony.
On cross-examination, Davies elicited testimony that appeared to indicate no investigator had tried to get restaurant security camera footage from the time of the food purchase, a move that could have shown who was in the car at that time.
Price closed the day Friday by calling a neighbor who lived near the Trousdale house and knew two young men who hung out there. A short time before violence broke out at the house, he recalled going out for a late meal with one of the young men and then dropping him off about 12:30 a.m.
Perhaps 25 minutes later, while back at his house, he testified he got a panicked call from the men begging him to come pick them up in the neighborhood because there'd just been a shooting at the Trousdale house.
He testified he retrieved the frightened men from a nearby cul de sac and gave them shelter in an empty town home. After daylight arrived, he said he began to understand the seriousness of what had happened and went to report what he knew to KPD.
On cross-examination, he acknowledged he'd offered police a far different time for when he'd gotten that urgent call. He first told authorities it was about 3 a.m.
That was an error, he said Friday. He said he later realized that was actually the time when they called seeking pillows and blankets after settling down in the townhome for the night.
It'll be up to jurors to decide what they think about his testimony.
