With no physical evidence tying him to the crime, the defense went on the attack against the one witness who pointed the finger at Phillip Woodley.
Only Jeff Rancour admits to being in the Tarpey Village home when Roy and Angie Woodley were killed and his testimony could make or break the case. Rancour testified that he was there when Phillip committed the murders.
The defense questioned his credibility in closing arguments.
"Who's Rancour?" asked defense attorney Eric Green. "Rancour's a thug. Ex-Army thug who sells dope, uses a shotgun to go rob dope dealers, takes care of people who steal from him."
The prosecution needs jurors to believe Rancour is more than a thug. They need the jury to believe Woodley lied when he told investigators he barely knew Rancour, and they need the jury to believe Rancour and Woodley worked together to sell off the proceeds from the murder, including Roy Woodley's pickup truck.
Prosecutor Burton Francis tried to convince the jury that Phillip Woodley was a meth addict with a motive -- to get his father's money -- so he took Rancour to the house.
The first time, Roy Woodley wasn't there, so Francis said they came back and the coroner described the results as brutal.
"For Phillip Woodley to execute his plan to get the inheritance, to get what he wants, which if you if you take what Dr. Gopal has to say, was taking what he wanted with a vengeance," Francis said. "Overkill, he described it as. He had to have Roy Woodley there."
But the defense said there wasn't enough money to make it a motive.
"What exactly was he inheriting? Did we hear any evidence of that? Did we hear any monetary value?"
After a four-week trial, the jury got the case late Thursday afternoon. There's no timetable on when they'll return a verdict, but with about 6,000 pages of evidence to sort through, it could take a while.
