Ronald Lee Pittman
photo by Jessica Kramer
Ronald Lee Pittman, co-defendant to Patrick Carmody, testified Wednesday that he entered Chance LeCroy’s house with Carmody and Billy Bob Partin on Sept. 9, 2010. He said they went “to take his money and his dope.”
Also, witness Eddie Holloway said he saw Carmody at about 12 p.m. on the same day “covered in blood.” He said he had seen all three suspects together in a truck at about 10:30 that morning.
Carmody is charged with the slaying of the 21-year-old LeCroy and is standing trial in Judge Barry Steelman’s courtroom.
During his testimony, Pittman said he didn’t tell Sgt. James Tate about the crime when he was first interviewed because Partin and Carmody were threatening him.
“Patrick told me he’d kill (my daughter),” he said. “(Partin) said, ‘I got friends. They’ll come around and see ya.’”
Pittman said during a second interview, conducted in 2012, he told Investigator Christopher Blackwell the truth because he “was tired of the stress and tired of living with it.”
In 2012, Pittman was arrested on charges of facilitation of a felony murder and facilitation of a felony robbery in the same case. He said his range of punishment was 10 years to life on one charge and 10 to 20 years on the other, and that his bond was originally $1.6 million. He said his bond was eventually lowered to $100,000, and he was placed on house arrest.
Though Pittman did not deny that he was hoping for some special treatment after testifying, he said he had no prior agreement with the state.
Pittman said he worked with Partin, Eddie Holloway, Manny Alcantara, Josh Dawson and others at the Harbor Lights property near Hixson Pike during the summer and fall of 2010. He said he had known Carmody since high school, and the defendant lived in a cabin in Harbor Lights.
Pittman said Holloway and Alcantara bought marijuana from LeCroy. He said they had known there was going to be a robbery and had shown Partin where LeCroy lived and told him LeCroy would have cash and a pound of marijuana on him the morning of the robbery.
The witness said he, Partin, and Carmody first met up on Sept. 9 at Academy Sports “in the a.m.,” where he purchased a box of .380 ammunition, duct tape, two masks, a cap, and Gatorade. He said the ammunition was requested by Holloway, since Partin had sold Holloway his .380 caliber gun.
Pittman said at a McDonald’s they all climbed into a truck that Partin had stolen and spray painted to change the color from blue to gray. He said the spray painting happened outside an abandoned house on the Harbor Lights property.
In the truck on the way to LeCroy’s house, the witness said Partin and Carmody wiped fingerprints off their bullets and reloaded them into their guns. Pittman said he carried a 9mm, Carmody a .45, and Partin the .380.
The witness said when they arrived at LeCroy’s house, Partin went inside first and found two men sleeping. Pittman said when Partin was back in the truck, they put the vehicle in reverse, but Carmody said, “No, we’re gonna do this.”
Pittman said he stayed in the kitchen while Carmody and Partin went into the back bedroom of the house.
“It starts getting loud back there, and I hear a commotion, and all of a sudden I hear a gunshot,” he said.
The witness told the jury the gunshot woke a man sleeping on the couch in the living room, and he approached and told the man to lie on the ground. He told defense attorney Lee Ortwein he wasn’t sure whether or not he put the gun to the victim’s head or told him he “ought to kill him.”
After this, Pittman said there were sounds of a fight from the back room and then a second gunshot. When the three men left LeCroy’s house, Pittman said he and Carmody got in a car and returned to Harbor Lights while Partin got rid of the truck. The witness said he stopped at Dawson’s apartment, where Carmody ran inside and likely showered.
Later, Pittman said Carmody built a fire near his cabin and burned his clothes because they were covered in blood. He said Carmody told him “he used the butt of the gun, hitting (LeCroy) in the head and the face” and then “shot him with his .45.”
“He was hitting him so hard that the clip came out,” said Pittman. “(Carmody) said afterwards he shot (LeCroy). He said Chance was still trying to get on him and stuff, and he looked over at Billy Bob, and Billy Bob finally shot him.”
Attorney Ortwein pointed out some inconsistencies with the testimony Pittman previously gave police, as well as the fact that Pittman purchased the ammunition that possibly killed LeCroy. He said Pittman placed the blame for his crimes, including incidents unrelated to the LeCroy case, on other people.
“You don’t accept responsibility for what you’ve done,” said attorney Ortwein. “You don’t. You avoid it. It’s exactly what you’re doing.”
Pittman said though he would like to be put on probation, his motivation in testifying was “to make things right.”
“If I have to go to prison for the rest of my life I will,” he said. “I’ve made mistakes in my past, none that I’m proud of.”
The jury also heard testimony from witness Eddie Holloway, who said he worked for Pittman at Harbor Lights property in 2010. He said his co-workers included Partin, Alcantara, and Dawson. He said Partin had tried to sell him a .380 caliber gun, but he had not bought it.
Holloway said in September 2010, Partin had a Chevrolet truck that he assumed was stolen because “it didn’t have an ignition switch in it.” He said the truck changed colors one day from dark-ish blue to gray.
The witness said he saw Carmody, Partin, and Pittman in the truck at about 10:30 in the morning on Sept. 9, 2010 and stopped to talk to them. He said he did not see any of them again until about noon when he was in Dawson’s apartment on his lunch break.
“We was sitting in the apartment taking lunch, and Mr. Carmody come in covered in blood,” he said.
Holloway said Carmody left “a blood trail of footsteps” on the carpet as he went to the shower. He said when Carmody emerged from the shower, he had a bundle wrapped up in a towel.
Defense attorney Ortwein asked Holloway why he didn’t ask Carmody any questions or call the police.
“I sure wasn’t gonna go confront him. I mean, would that have been a smart thing to do?” Holloway responded.
“Better than just sitting there, wasn’t it,” asked attorney Ortwein.
“No,” replied Holloway.
The witness said after Sept. 9, the carpet in Dawson’s apartment “had been cut out … and new carpet had been laid,” but he didn’t know how it happened.
Attorney Ortwein produced previous testimony from Holloway where Holloway had said he had fixed the carpet in Dawson’s apartment because Pittman had told him a dog had scratched it up.
“I’d been threatened by all of them if I’d ever said anything about anything I’d seen,” said Holloway.
Prosecutor Cameron Williams spoke to Investigator Christopher Blackwell of the Chattanooga Police Department, who has been working on the LeCroy case since 2012. Investigator Blackwell said information from new leads initially directed him to the Harbor Lights area.
He said in a field across from the cabin where Carmody had lived in 2010 was a trail that led to a burn pit and a roll of carpet. He said the property manager, Holloway, came out to meet them while they were investigating the area in May of 2012.
When Investigator Blackwell and other officers told Holloway they were looking into an incident from 2010, Holloway’s reaction was, “Sept. 9.”
Investigator Blackwell said Holloway then told him, “You’re going in the right direction.”
The witness said Holloway took officers to the apartment where Dawson had resided in 2010. Inside were two different colors of carpet, said Investigator Blackwell.
“There was three sections of carpet rolled up in the woods, and they matched the dimensions of the carpet cut in the apartment,” he said.
Also in Harbor Lights, at a dead end, was an abandoned house where Investigator Blackwell said they found a Tennessee license plate, as well as primer gray spray paint cans and lids.
The owner of the license plate testified to having owned a dark blue Chevrolet truck in 2010. He said the truck was stolen. He also noted there were no headrests in the vehicle.
Agent Mike Turbeville from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation testified as an expert in forensic biology and serology. He said he found no blood on the sample taken from the carpet that he was sent by the Chattanooga Police Department. He also said he tested multiple swabs and items from the crime scene for DNA and found a few contained a mixture of DNA from a subject other than LeCroy.
He said samples from the large safe in LeCroy’s closet, the bedroom wall, and LeCroy’s fingernails included DNA from both LeCroy and his girlfriend Emily Sailors, but a sample from the magazine found in LeCroy’s bedroom included both LeCroy’s DNA and unidentifiable DNA.
Attorney Ortwein noted that Carmody, Pittman, and Partin were excluded as possible contributors to the DNA found on the magazine. Agent Turbeville agreed that the DNA results from his first report could not determine the gender of the second contributor on that item.
Eddie Holloway
photo by Jessica Kramer