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Tuesday, May 5, 1998

A stunning reversal changes the case

EDITOR'S NOTE - It was an unlikely trio that faced charges in the shotgun murder of a popular high school honor student from Oklahoma named Heather Rich. One had a history as a juvenile offender, another was an underprivileged but popular football captain. The third was a "cool" kid with money and a fancy car. Prosecutors prepare to seek justice in a Texas courtroom as this installment begins.

By MIKE COCHRAN Associated Press Writer

WAURIKA, Okla. (AP) - On Oct. 2, 1997, precisely one year after Heather Rich's disappearance, jury selection began in the capital murder trial of Curtis Allen Gambill, the troubled dropout who first incriminated his two buddies in Heather's murder.

The trial had moved from Montague County, Texas, where her body was pitched into a rural creek, to Fort Worth on a change of venue. Montague prosecutor Tim Cole made it clear he wanted a death penalty.

A worried Gambill and his attorneys figured he just might get it.

For one thing, Randy Wood, the Waurika homecoming king, had struck a deal with Cole to avoid a possible death penalty. He would plead guilty and testify against both Gambill and Waurika classmate Josh Bagwell, who would be tried later.

Wood was prepared to name Gambill as the triggerman.

But after two tedious weeks produced only six jurors, opposing attorneys announced a deal in which Gambill was permitted to plead guilty to a lesser charge than capital murder in exchange for his testimony in Bagwell's pending trial.

As part of the deal, Gambill took the stand and admitted that he, not Wood, fired the nine shots that killed Heather.

Both sides emerged with critical concessions, but Gambill was the big winner. Not only did he escape a potential death sentence, he knocked 10 years off the minimum time he must serve before being eligible for parole.

That was because he was allowed to plead to so-called "straight" murder instead of capital murder.

"This is the best outcome we could possibly hope for in this case," defense lawyer Roger Williams of Nocona, Texas, said at the time.

Then and now, Cole regrets the deal.

"Sometimes you're forced into a position to do something you consider distasteful," he says. "The case against Bagwell depended on testimony from the other two defendants."

He said he thought at the time that Gambill, then 20, deserved the death penalty and "nothing has happened to change my mind. I believe he would have gotten death if we'd gone forward."

Gail Rich, Heather's mother, supported the decision, even believing that Gambill was the actual killer, because she wanted all three to pay. But she told Gambill in no uncertain words she expected him to testify truthfully against Josh Bagwell.

"I told Curtis that I have no mercy, no sympathy for him," she explained to reporter Steve Clements of the Wichita Falls Times Record News.

"But I told him I was going to give him his life so he would help us. I want all of them to see justice," she said. "I want Josh to get equal justice.

"I want that very, very bad."

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Unlike his less affluent co-defendants, Josh Bagwell would stand trial for murder surrounded by high-dollar attorneys and dressed like a college fraternity brother.

State District Judge Roger Towery had denied a defense motion for a change of venue and set Bagwell's trial in Montague, population 300.

Although his life was not at stake, Bagwell's fate would be decided in Towery's wood-paneled courtroom on the third floor of the Montague County Courthouse. Though sorely in need of paint, the grand old brown-brick, white-pillared structure is the most imposing, not only in town, but in the entire county.

Two Oklahoma attorneys, John Zelbst and Barry Cousins, and a former Montague County district attorney, Jack McGaughey, were at Bagwell's side when jury selection began Feb. 3, 1998.

Unlike the jeans or jail whites worn by his two companions in their courtroom appearances, Bagwell, now 19, wore a stylish navy-blue suit with his hair cut short and neatly parted.

It was a grim reunion. Clements was there, of course, although the saga had yet to gain significant attention beyond his region. On hand also was Gail Rich, looking for final vindication, and Cole, who was dedicated to providing it.

Soon to appear would be Gambill, now on record as pulling the trigger of the shotgun that killed Heather Rich, and Wood, the Waurika homecoming king who helped. Both had agreed to incriminate Bagwell to escape likely capital murder convictions.

But there were serious problems.

Bagwell never gave investigators a statement in the case and in fact claimed he was not part of, or even privy to, the plan to kill Heather. He would say that his sex with the Waurika High cheerleader was consensual.

Furthermore, Bagwell's lawyers were ready to destroy Wood's credibility to rescue their unrepentant client from prison. To that end, they had recruited an unexpected ally: Gambill. Changing his story once more, Gambill claimed again it was Wood who shot Heather.

Though Gambill's earlier confession tied Bagwell to a conspiracy and cover-up, he was now saying Bagwell knew nothing of the plot to kill Heather and was not at the truck when she was shot.

As testimony opened, the credibility of the kid they called "Woody" loomed as the key to the trial.

But unknown even to his own attorney, a remorseful Randy Lee Wood had reached a decision that would change the dynamics of the case forever.

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The decision was inconceivable.

To remove the stigma of his plea bargain, Wood decided to renege on his deal with Texas prosecutors, which had enormous ramifications for everyone, most notably himself. He was now prepared to testify without promise of leniency that he participated in the murder.

Wood remained charged with capital murder and, with the state having no choice but eventually to try him, he could now die for the crime. At the very least, he could spend 40 years instead of 30 in prison before being eligible for parole.

"I thought about it for a long time," Wood confided later. "I made the decision the Monday before I testified on Tuesday. It was something I had to do for myself and for them," he said, referring to the Rich family.

"I knew it would make people see I was telling the truth."

Indeed, the decision disrupted the defense plan. It could no longer argue persuasively that Wood was providing incriminating testimony against Bagwell in exchange for a lighter sentence and to curry favor with the prosecution.

Cherese Bagwell, for one, suspected that Wood had cut some kind of secret deal with the district attorney that did not bode well for her son.

But prosecutor Cole said he was equally mystified.

"He did it for reasons only he can explain," Cole would say later. "It's not logical. It doesn't make sense to anyone except him."

Wood's own lawyer, Pat Morris of Decatur, Texas, was aghast, resolutely arguing with his client that to testify without an incentive was folly.

"Take the plea or don't testify," he told Wood. "One or the other."

His client did not waver.

"I knew I was making things worse for myself," Wood said. "There was no way I could testify without incriminating myself. But I thought it was the right thing to do."

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Next: Part IV, A Homecoming King's Remorse.