MOUNT VERNON — Knox County Prosecutor John Thatcher might not like the results of a plea deal or the details of a confession, but you will never see that on his face in a court of law. Behind closed doors, his opinion may be vastly different, but as he says, the public does not want his opinion — the public wants justice.
John Stidham’s recent plea deal to an involuntary manslaughter charge for the death of Raymond Staats, is a prime example. According to Thatcher, what he could prove about the case and what the public knew were two different things.
The facts
The facts about the case are really minimal, Thatcher said.
Staats was reported missing around Jan. 13, 2009. He was last seen in Canton on Jan. 9, 2009, by a friend who said he was coming to Knox County. Staats was not purposefully linked to Knox County until the Mount Vernon Police Department started its investigation into embezzlement allegations from an owner of Tracy and Mills Surveyors. The investigation led to a Nov. 9, 2010 search warrant on a New Guilford Road property owned by John and Cami Stidham. It was during the execution of this search warrant that stolen property was found including a red Dodge Express truck owned by Staats. A second search warrant was issued to collect the stolen property and Staats’ vehicle. A total of 51 stolen items were recovered.
A third search warrant within a 36-hour period brought cadaver dogs to the New Guilford Road property and adjacent property the Stidhams owned on Woods Church Road in search of Staats’ body. The two cadaver dogs were agitated near an outbuilding but did not show signs that would give handlers reason to believe a body was nearby.
Throughout the next several months, more stolen property was acquired through additional search warrants. The original indictment against Stidham was updated to include nearly 30 counts of receiving stolen property, insurance fraud and corruption.
But still, no Raymond Staats.
The debate
Detectives believed Staats’ body would be found on the New Guilford Road or Woods Church Road property through information they were hearing from inmates who had been speaking with Stidham since his incarceration on Nov. 9, 2010. Despite following those tips, they were unable to locate the body and came to the conclusion that Stidham was the only person with the answer.
“The sheriff’s office was telling us they weren’t going to be able to find Raymond Staats without [Stidham’s] cooperation,” Thatcher said. “Even if they did, they wouldn’t have any corroborating witnesses and probably no forensic evidence to really tell us what happened other than he was killed.”
Thatcher told the News the missing persons case of Staats really came down to two things — negotiate with Stidham for the body or allow the case to remain a missing persons case.
“You have this opportunity and it’s going to go away eventually,” Thatcher said about Stidham’s scheduled August jury trial. “The longer this thing goes on and we can’t find the body, if it were me, I’d get more confident. They have been looking for this body since November, they have done all these things and still can’t find it. Why would I say anything?”
Weighing the two alternatives, Thatcher said he would rather see Stidham charged with some crime in connection with Staats’ death rather than send him to prison thinking he got away with murder.
“This is an opportunity and you have to decide whether to take it or not,” he said. “It’s only four years — it’s not enough — but it’s four years mandatory prison sentence. It’s some consequence for what he did but we don’t have anything to prove otherwise.”
The body in the septic tank
With information provided by Stidham, on July 13, the Knox County Sheriff’s Office, along with investigators from the Bureau of Criminal Investigation and Identification converged on a third property on Newcastle Road with a warrant in hand to search a second septic tank on the property for Staats.
“BCII came in and helped set up perimeter and documented everything,” Thatcher said. “The septic tank was drained first, and it was confirmed the body was in the septic tank.”
From there, Thatcher said the tank’s lid was cut in half with a concrete saw and a strap was used to hoist the lid off the tank and photographs were taken.
“BCII came in and helped set up perimeter and documented everything,” Thatcher said. “The septic tank was drained first, and it was confirmed the body was in the septic tank.”
From there, Thatcher said the tank’s lid was cut in half with a concrete saw and a strap was used to hoist the lid off the tank and photographs were taken.
“BCII and the sheriff’s office were prepared for any condition the body might have been in — intact or not — to make sure that every piece of Raymond Staats was removed from the septic tank. They were prepared to, by hand and with buckets, empty out the septic tank and sift through the contents of the septic tank to try to find any evidence, any part of Raymond Staats’ body or clothing.”
The autopsy
The preliminary autopsy report released by Knox County Coroner Dr. Jennifer Ogle, showed Staats was shot three times. Two bullets and one bullet fragment were found in his body. Gunshot wounds were found in the neck and torso which resulted in an injury to Staats’ spinal cord, Ogle said, which resulted in his death.
In addition, Staats was found with a plastic bag secured over his head, leading Ogle to believe he was asphyxiated.
According to Ogle, the state of Staats’ decomposed body made it difficult to conclude exact details of his death. However, as far as why the bag was on his head, and why Ogle believed Staats was asphyxiated, forensic science could provide the answer.
“After death no bleeding occurs, because the heart no longer beats to move the blood through the vessels,” Ogle told the News. “While a gunshot wound could ‘drip’ a little blood after death, it makes more sense that the bag was used to facilitate death, not to contain blood. We also know that Mr. Staats was shot in the torso, but no attempt was made to contain blood in that area.”
The proof of murder, or lack thereof
“Even if everyone thinks this is a murder charge — I might be inclined to agree — but I have to prove John Stidham purposely caused the death of Raymond Staats,” Thatcher said. “The bag over his head may indicate that he did or it may indicate that’s what he did after Raymond Staats was shot and what he used to make sure Raymond Staats didn’t leave any blood evidence. I don’t know. That is what they call reasonable doubt.”
It is the level of doubt that Thatcher had to contend with when working with Stidham on a plea deal that would put him in prison and lead officials to Raymond Staats — regardless of Stidham’s version of the incident.
“Without judging anybody’s lifestyle, because both of them were involved in criminal activity, this crime happened without any witnesses around, it didn’t get reported right away and was hidden,” Thatcher said. “Raymond Staats didn’t want anyone to know he was in Knox County. John Stidham didn’t want to report the crime right away because he had all of this stolen property.”
With no witnesses, no DNA to connect Stidham with the shooting of Staats, no weapon and no body, Thatcher said there was really nothing he could do as far as charging Stidham with Staats’ disappearance.
The plea deal
The addition of more charges against Stidham in April provided the leverage authorities needed to get Stidham amiable to negotiations, whether or not he would follow through was always up in the air until Stidham appeared in court and signed the paperwork.
“I think whenever you are dealing with something like this, there is always a chance the defendant won’t follow through and won’t plead,” Thatcher said. “So, it wasn’t about just finding the body. It was about finding the body and getting the plea.”
To get to the place in negotiations where Stidham would give up the location of Staats’ body and confess to his death, not only did the prosecution have to agree to involuntary manslaughter, but it also had to take off gun specification charges that come with a mandatory one-year sentence, and the first-degree felony charge of engaging in corrupt activity that could have added three to 10 years to his sentence.
“I think the simplest way to put this was he was negotiating the actual length of prison sentence and adjusting the charges he was going to plead guilty to,” Thatcher said.
Once the agreement is made and Stidham leads authorities to the body and makes his confession, Thatcher said he must hold up his end of the deal regardless of what is found and Stidham’s version of what took place.
“We can’t make an agreement that says we are going to offer you involuntary manslaughter and when we find the body and the evidence isn’t consistent with your story, we are going to renege on that agreement — it just doesn’t work that way,” Thatcher said. “We wouldn’t be able to use his confession against him in that case and we wouldn’t have been able to use any of the evidence that we found because of that confession.”
“If there was another way to do it, without relying on John Stidham’s version of what happened and negotiating a plea, we would have done it that way,” Thatcher said.
The confession
As part of his plea deal, Stidham was required to give a confession as to how Staats died and answer follow-up questions from detectives.
Stidham’s explanation was that Staats threatened his family on Jan. 9, 2009, and came after him with a gun, firing at Stidham. The two men struggled over the gun, of which Stidham managed to gain control and shot Staats, although his attorney, Knox County Public Defender Bruce Malek, said Stidham did not remember firing the weapon at Staats.
Stidham further explained to his attorney that he placed the bag around Staats’ head to keep from leaving blood evidence as Stidham transported Staats’ body from his New Guilford Road home to the sight of an abandoned trailer and old septic tank on the Newcastle Road property.
“There isn’t anything logical about this, even though the gunshot wounds indicate it wasn’t self-defense, the circumstances about what was going on when those gunshot wounds were inflicted isn’t anything the coroner was going to be able to tell us,” Thatcher said. “I don’t know where you would be shot if you were trying to fight with someone over a gun if you were having a fight.”
The conviction
Ultimately, the decision to make any plea deal falls on the shoulder of the prosecutor — Thatcher will attest to that. The swift nature of Stidham’s confession, the finding of the body and a bill of information that brought Stidham to court just two days after Staats’ body was identified, was Thatcher’s way of getting Stidham in court to live up to his end of the deal before he changed his mind.
“The ultimate decision was mine. So, my decision was, an imperfect justice is better than no justice at all,” Thatcher said.
“I think prosecutors can do what we need to get done to get justice accomplished even if it’s not perfect,” Thatcher said. “Sometimes we are able to do that and satisfy the victims and the public so that they know everything that happened and why. Sometimes we can’t do that.”
