Frank Casteel on the witness stand
Almost two decades after the 1988 killings that two separate juries have found he committed, Frank Casteel continued to insist on Monday that he is not guilty of killing three men on Signal Mountain.
Casteel, who is now 59 and walks slowly with the aid of a cane, was in a Hamilton County Criminal Courtroom for a post-conviction hearing.
His attorney, Ruth DeLange, said it is "not a smoking gun case," but one built on circumstantial evidence.
District Attorney Bill Cox countered that Casteel was twice convicted "on an abundance of circumstantial and direct evidence."
He said about a dozen witnesses testified that Casteel had confronted them with a shotgun "in an aggressive and threatening manner" on his property at the Helicon Gate on the way to the popular Blue Hole.
The prosecutor said the property owner was the only one who would have had the motive to move the bodies a considerable distance away from the Casteel property in one direction and the three-wheelers in another direction.
He said John Cavett, the Casteel attorney in his second trial in 1993, "did a competent job."
Judge Jerry Scott of Murfreesboro is presiding over the post-conviction matter.
The case grows out of the 1988 murders of Richard Mason, Kenneth Griffith and Earl Smock. A number of their family members were at the hearing, as was Casteel's son, Trevor Casteel, who has long proclaimed his father's innocence.
Attorney Ruth DeLange and Casteel