Jury selection started last week, and the jurors were finally seated yesterday. It was a slow, deliberate process in a criminal case that has taken years to get to this point.
The last time Jeanette Amos saw her son, Kevin, was Dec. 27, 2002. He visited their Saginaw home that day to visit his baby and the baby's mother at a Bridgeport Township apartment.
Kevin Amos Sr. drove his son to the apartment. "I made sure he got in the house."
The attorney general's office says Patrick Martin and Terrance Shepard were also in the apartment house, and that's where they allegedly killed Amos. Nearly three months later, in March 2003, his body was found by Timothy Watson as he fished along the Cass River in Tuscola County. "The first thing I thought of, was it was a sick joke? Then, the more I looked at it, that's when I knew what it was: it was a body."
Investigators say Martin pistol-whipped Amos. Then Shepard and Tanisha Williams, who last month pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, duct-taped Amos who died of suffocation.
"Actually, the entire face from the eyebrows down to the chin was covered with grey tape, around the back of the head and front of the face several times," Medical Examiner Dr. Kanu Virani said.
Virani testified that a plastic bag was found in the victim's mouth and that two quarters were found in his stomach.
"The mouth and nose were duct taped," Virani said. "They have to be forced into his mouth before applying the duct tape, and was forced to swallow them."
We can't identify the mother of Amos' child, but she testified that she introduced Kevin Amos to Patrick Martin, and Martin attended the funeral for Amos.
Tanisha Williams took the stand late this afternoon. She testified that after Martin pistol-whipped Amos, Martin told her she had to help tape the victim's mouth shut or he would kill her, too.
The trial continues next week.
