“I’ve blocked out a lot of this stuff, man,” he said as he was questioned by Murff Bledsoe, first assistant district attorney. “You don’t know how it is to go over and over it in my mind.”
Wilson has admitted shooting Ray Lee Taplin with a shotgun blast to the neck but says he was acting in self-defense. Wilson and Taplin had been involved in an ongoing dispute over Jasmine Alexander, who was involved sexually with both men.
In the days leading up to the March 16, 2007, shooting, the feud between the two began to escalate.
Wilson said that on March 14, Ms. Alexander told him that Taplin had choked her and pushed her down on a bed and tried to force himself on her.
That same morning Ms. Alexander, accompanied by Wilson, attempted to file a restraining order against Taplin with the Temple Police Department. They were told they needed to schedule a hearing with a judge to get the restraining order, Wilson said.
A summons to appear was delivered to the Taplin home the day after he was shot dead.
Ms. Alexander, who has changed her story several times about events involved in the case, testified Tuesday that she was scared of Wilson. She said he had her make up the story against Taplin and forced her to seek the restraining order.
Later on March 14, Wilson said Ms. Alexander tracked him down at a friend’s house and told him that Taplin and another man had just been to her grandmother’s house, where she and Wilson were staying.
Wilson said she told him that Taplin and the other man had “burned off in the yard” with the car.
When Wilson heard about the incident he said he drove his mother’s 1996 burgundy Cadillac to Taplin’s home.
He said he saw a young girl on the front porch of the house and opened his car door, the window was broken, and asked where was Ray Lee.
To Wilson’s surprise, Taplin and his cousin, Steve Armstrong, where drinking beer in a parked car in front of the house.
“I asked him why did he keep coming up there bothering that girl (Ms. Alexander) when I wasn’t there,” Wilson said.
A heated argument ensued. It was so loud that Taplin’s mother and brother came out of the house to see what was going on.
Wilson said he left the area because the situation was getting too tense.
A day later he woke to find a large scratch in the door of his mother’s car. He and Ms. Alexander filed a police report and he called in to work and told his supervisor he would not be in.
Wilson said he had gone back to sleep but was awakened by a tap at the bedroom window that scared him.
“I did not know Ray Lee was coming,” he said. “I did not know she (Ms. Alexander) had called him.”
Ms. Alexander and Wilson, carrying his 12-guage shotgun, moved to the side door of the house. Ms. Alexander let Taplin in and within seconds Wilson had shot him at close range in the neck.
“He reached for something,” Wilson said. “Man, I thought he had a gun, so I shot him.”
Wilson said the shooting has been difficult to deal with. His mother testified that she convinced him to get counseling to deal with depression caused by the event.
The thing that affected him most, Wilson said, was hearing Taplin’s mother scream when she showed up at the house at 1117 S. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and found out her son was dead. Wilson said he heard her screams from a patrol car he was sitting in.
“That hurt me to my heart,” he said.
Although Ms. Alexander mentioned in the initial 911 call that Taplin may have been wielding hammer when he came to the home, one was never found at the crime scene.
Wilson testified that he never saw the bat that was found in Taplin’s coat sleeve.
Detectives and experts in forensics were not able to find fingerprints or skin cells on a paring knife that was found on a door threshold a few feet from Taplin’s body.
Police were also not able to lift fingerprints from the bat.
Four blood spots on the bat, two on the barrel and two on the handle, where swabbed and tested. The blood from all four locations was Taplin’s, said Leslie Johnson, a forensic scientist with a DPS crime lab in Waco.
A former girlfriend of Wilson’s, Mary Ann Garrett, testified about an event 11 months before the shooting.
She said her two-year relationship with Wilson fell apart when Taplin told her that Ms. Alexander was also romantically involved with Wilson.
She said she and Ms. Alexander eventually got into a physical fight over Wilson.
A verdict in the case is expected today. Closing arguments are set to begin at 9 a.m.
If Wilson is found guilty of the murder charge, a sentencing hearing will follow.
promer@temple-telegram.com
