Opinion ID: 1465616
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: What Happened Next

Text: Harris was taken to the hospital for treatment of his wound. While he was there, Detective Darryl Massey interviewed him briefly and arranged for a gunshot residue test to be performed. The results of that test were negative, although the lab technician testified that, because such residue could be washed or wiped off, a negative finding did not mean that the person had not fired a gun. In an interview conducted the next day at the police station, Harris told Detective Massey that he and Ms. McLeod were on their way to a restaurant when they got into an argument, that he pulled over to discuss the issue, and that it was while they were parked that a black male approached the passenger side of the vehicle and commenced to rob and shoot him and Ms. McLeod. Massey did not regard Harris as a suspect at that point, and, when the interview was completed, Harris left the station. Later that night or early the next morning, Massey received a telephone call, and, from the information related to him, which he did not describe, Massey brought Nicholas Jantz, Brill's friend, to the station for questioning. The interview took place on Sunday, January 28, and, based on Jantz's testimony in court, he informed the detective, among other things, that Brill had come to his house one evening after meeting with Harris and revealed that Harris had offered him $20,000 to murder a woman. [3] Jantz added that the murder weapon was to be a Glock 19, which Harris would supply, and that Harris was going to take him to this woman's work and he was going to go in and sort of commit a common robbery and then shoot her, then come back out and about three blocks away, Mr. Harris was going to pick [Brill] up. Jantz further testified, and thus presumably told Detective Massey, about subsequent contacts between Harris and Brill that on the day of the murder he was with Brill when Harris picked them up and took them to the park and gave Brill a pager, [4] and that about a week before the murder but close to the time when it was first scheduled to occur, he saw Brill with the Glock 19 murder weapon. Jantz said that, around 8:30 on the evening of the murder, while he and Brill were together, Brill received a page from Harris and said that he had to leave. Jantz later heard the police cars and ambulance. He walked to the park and saw Harris being wheeled into the ambulance and Ms. McLeod under a sheet. After taking Jantz's statement, Detective Massey brought three other people in for questioningJoseph Brill (Russell Brill's younger brother), Jennifer Pettie (Joseph Brill's fiance and mother of his two children), and Russell Brill. As with Nicholas Jantz, the statements given to the police by those three persons are not in the record now before us. Joseph Brill and Ms. Pettie, who testified, said that their testimony was no different than what they told the police. Ms. Pettie said that, a few days before the murder was supposed to happen, Russell Brill told her that he took a contract with someone to kill this woman. He did not reveal the name of the person with whom he had so contracted but said that it was the woman's husband and that Russell was to be paid $20,000 from an insurance policy. On the night of the murder, she was with Russell and Joseph Brill and Nicholas Jantz. She saw Russell cleaning a gun, which she later identified as the Glock 19, that Russell said he got from the husband. Around 7:30, she said, Russell's pager went off, and he said it was time to go. He returned about 10:00, shaking and crying. He told Ms. Pettie that he had shot both Harris and Ms. McLeod: He said that he was hiding in the bushes by the train tracks and they pulled up in their car and he waited and then he went up and put the gun to the car and told her to give him her stuff, and she gave him her purse and he snatched her necklace off her neck, and then they were out of the car by then and he just shot her and she was begging please, don't shoot me. Russell further stated, she said, that, with the next bullet he shot the man in the leg because it was to look like a robbery and that is what he was told to do. Joseph Brill reported that, about two weeks before the murder, Russell told him that this guy Robert Harris offered him twenty thousand dollars, a couple of keys [ sic ] of cocaine and a case of guns to murder his other guy's wife for some reason or another and said that the money was to come from an insurance policy on Teresa McLeod. Russell said at first the murder was to happen when she was leaving work, but that changed, and it was to occur at Violet Lil Park and look like a robbery. Russell was to get the gun from Harris, go to the park, hide in the bushes, wait for Harris's signal, and make it look like a robbery. Joseph saw Russell with the gun three days before the murder and again on the day of the murder. Joseph said that Russell got the page around 9:30, and that he then left. He returned about two hours later, nervous and crying, removed his clothes, and put them in a trash bag. The gun was put in a hole in the wall of Joseph's apartment. Joseph confirmed Jennifer Pettie's recollection of what Russell said: He told me that he was waiting in the bushes for Rob's signal and when he got the signal, he went out, made it look like a robbery, grabbed the necklace off her neck, took her pocketbook, put the barrel of the gun up to her chest, shot her. And heshe turned around and went down on one knee and he shot her in the back, and then he walked away and he said for some reason he don't know why, he turned back around and, uhm, just kept shooting her and he said he went blank; and with the last bullet, he turned and shot Rob in the leg and took off running. Russell added that he shot Harris in the leg to make it look like Harris had nothing to do with the murder. Joseph said that, at some point on the 28th, prior to his being brought in for questioning, he saw the police at Jantz's house and alerted Russell. Russell asked Joseph to bury the gun stored in the wall in Joseph's apartment. Joseph agreed and took the gun, along with the mask and gloves worn by Russell on the night of the murder, and buried them in the woods near Loudon Cemetery. During his interrogation later that day, he told the police what he had done and took them to the place where he had buried the items. We have already recounted, in general, the story Russell Brill gave in court as to what had occurred. In contrast to that story, he admitted in his testimony that he had told Joseph and the police that he, rather than Harris, had shot Ms. McLeod. He said that he told that to his brother because his brother always looked up to him as a thug and he did not want Joseph to think that he was a punk and backed out of anything. He told that story to the police because he didn't want to be no snitch. He also, as we shall describe, pled guilty to having shot and killed Ms. McLeod. Based on the taped statements taken from Jantz, Pettie, and the Brill brothers, Russell Brill and Harris were arrested and charged with murder. On January 29 the next dayLisa Petty, Russell Brill's girlfriend, had a telephone conversation with Russell, who was then in jail. He informed her that he had been arrested for murder, and, when she inquired whether he did it, he first replied that he had, but then recanted and told Ms. Petty that he had been hired to kill Ms. McLeod but was unable to do it, that Harris had shot her, and that he then shot Harris in the leg. Russell told Ms. Petty that he admitted being the shooter because he was afraid of Harris. Ms. Petty said that she would call Detective Massey and ask him to speak again with Russell. She did call Massey, and, from that conversation, Massey said that he learned that Harris was the shooter. The indictments are not in the record now before us, but it is clear that both men were charged with first-degree murder and that the State filed a notice that it was seeking a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole as to each of them.