TruTV’s live coverage of the Ryan Skipper murder trial yesterday in Bartow, Fla., was interrupted yesterday by coverage of another case, which is unfortunate because a potentially significant new allegation was revealed in testimony given while the cameras were dark.
According to witness John Kirchoff — who was part of a cadre of meth addicts who were associates of defendants Joe Bearden and William Brown — within hours after Skipper’s murder, he had a conversation with Brown, who told him, “I killed him, man. I killed him.”
And then, according to Kirchoff, Brown claimed that his father had raped him, apparently more than once.
Here’s a rough transcript of the report by TruTV’s Jean Casarez:
What I think what is interesting here is that Bill Brown, the co-defendant, is really coming into this case even stronger in regard to the murder count, because we just had a witness before lunch — it would be John Kirchoff — who said that Bill Brown, the next morning, was knocking on the window — and I’m talking about March 14. Came in. He [Kirchoff] was alone with [Brown, who] started to cry.
And he said, “I killed him, man. I killed him.” Now here’s what I haven’t been able to tell you that I think is important from [Brown]. According to John Kirchoff, this excited untterance of “I killed him, man. I killed him” — he never talks about the defendant Bearden, but what he does talk about is his own father. How he hates his own father because his father has held a knife and a gun to him before, forcing him to engage in homosexual sex.
So, yes, the father engaged his own son in sex. That’s the co-defendant, Bill Brown. So maybe we’re seeing a clue here why the prosecution has not proceeded with the hate crime — that the motivation, especially with [Bill Brown], could be something else.
The Lakeland Ledger also described Kirchoff’s testimony:
Kirchoff … testified that Brown came back in the morning and was very upset.
He recalled Brown was sobbing and talking about how his father molested him at knife- and gunpoint.
Brown then stopped crying, stared at Kirchoff and said, “I killed him,” according to Kirchoff.
Kirchoff said he assumed Brown was confessing to killing his father because he had previously been talking about the past sexual abuse.
“It scared the hell out of me,” Kirchoff said.
He tried to describe Brown’s facial expression.
“He looked evil,” Kirchoff said.
If you are just tuning into the trial, note that Brown and Bearden are being tried separately, and the proceedings currently underway are in the case against Bearden. Bearden admits he was involved in events on the night of the murder but denies he was in Ryan Skipper’s car when Skipper was stabbed 20 times and then left to die on a gravel road in a rural area.
Bill Brown will be tried later this year.
