By Mark Hansel
NKyTribune managing editor
It will be several weeks before convicted killer David Wayne Dooley knows if he is granted a new trial.
Testimony ended Monday and Dooley’s defense team saved what may be its most compelling witness testimony for last.
David Wayne Dooley is lead into the courtroom for day five of a hearing to determine if he will get a new trial. In 2014, Dooley was convicted of killing Michelle Mockbee, a mother of two, outside of the Thermo Fischer Scientific facility in Florence where they both worked (photos by Mark Hansel).
Dooley was sentenced to life in prison in 2014 for killing Mockbee at Thermo Fisher Scientific, in the Northern Kentucky Industrial Park in Florence.
The mother of two was found bludgeoned to death shortly after she arrived at work on May 29, 2012.
Dooley has always maintained his innocence.
His hopes for a new trial rest on the ability of his defense attorneys, Deanna Dennison and Jeff Lawson to convince Circuit Court Judge James R. Schrand, that prosecutors withheld evidence in the murder trial.
A video that shows a man identified by investigators as a “random dude” walking on the property and appearing to try to enter a breakroom at Beckman Coulter, at 8:11 p.m. on May 28, just 10 hours before Mockbee was killed, has become a key peice of evidence.
Beckman Coulter shares the large facility with Thermo Fischer Scientific.
The questions involving that video are – who saw it, who knew what about it, and when did they know it?
Dooley’s trial attorneys, Tom Pugh and Chris Roach, say they didn’t see the video before the trial, and hadn’t seen at all until this retrial hearing, nearly five years after Mockbee was killed.
Boone Commonwealth’s Attorney Linda Tally Smith also claims she didn’t see the video before the trial and didn’t even know it existed until former Boone County Sheriff’s investigator Bruce McVay told her about it months after Dooley was convicted.
Dooley’s defense team recalled McVay to the stand Monday afternoon, and lead detective on the case contradicted Tally Smith’s statement. McVay said that he was instructed by Tally Smith to watch a month’s worth of videos from the facility in preparation for trial.
Former Boone County Sheriff’s investigator Bruce McVay testified Monday that Commonwealth’s Attorney Linda Tally Smith knew before trial about a video showing a “random dude” at the Thermo Fischer Scientific facility hours before Michelle Mockbee was killed. Tally Smith has maintained she did not know about the video until months after the trial. The video is a key piece of evidence that could determine if convicted killer David Wayne Dooley gets a new trial.
“Did you have a conversation with Commonwealth’s Attorney Linda Talley Smith before the trial about the person walking beside Beckman Coulter on the 28th of May, at approximately 8:11 p.m.?” Lawson asked.
“Yes,” McVay replied.
McVay admitted that he did not initially tell Tally Smith about the video because she had been under a lot of stress getting ready for the trial and he wanted to first verify the man’s identity.
In previous testimony, McVay admitted to being involved in a sexual relationship with Tally Smith, which she has confirmed, but said did not begin until after the trial.
“So there was a little bit of a delay from when you told this to Miss Tally Smith, but it is your testimony today, clear, unequivocal, that before the trial, she knew about that man walking from Empire Drive on the 28th of May?” Lawson asked.
“I don’t know what the date was, I don’t know…where that occurred…but I remember having a conversation with her about what we found and that we had made contact with Alvin Reynolds and he had agreed to come in and testify,” McVay said.
Reynolds was a truck driver who arrived at the facility on the afternoon of May 28 and was the person investigators believe was the “random dude.”
Dooley’s defense attorneys dispute that assertion and in earlier testimony, Reynolds said he never left his truck once he arrived at the facility.
The man on the video disappears from the screen and is not captured on-camera again.
Boone Commonwealth’s Attorney Linda Tally Smith (wearing glasses) looks at a video of a “random” dude on the grounds of Thermo Fischer Scientific. Tally Smith says she didn’t know about the video, which has become a key piece of evidence in the David Dooley retrial hearing, until months after Dooley was convicted.
Tally Smith said investigators never interviewed Reynolds immediately after the killing because video shows he left the facility about four minutes after Mockbee arrived.
More than two years later, Deputy Everett Stahl, another investigator in the case, called Reynolds to try to confirm that he was the “random dude” in the video.
Tally Smith took the stand Friday and was questioned by representatives of the Attorney General’s office, who took over the case after a thumb drive provided by a former employee raised questions about Tally Smith’s conduct.
While it is usually the defense that seeks a new trial, the Office of the Attorney General requested the CR 60.02 hearing that will determine if Dooley gets a new trial.
Tally Smith returned to the stand for several hours of questioning by Dooley’s defense team Monday morning.
In her questioning of Tally Smith, which became heated several times, Dennison claimed Reynolds’ driver’s license information was not consistent with the physical dimensions of the “random dude.” She offered an alternate theory of the crime – that the “random dude” could have hidden out, waited for the facility’s doors to open at 5 a.m. on May 29, slipped inside and committed the murder. Mockbee was killed shortly after arriving at the facility at 5:53 a.m.
Dennison became frustrated with Tally Smith several times during the testimony as she believed the Commonwealth’s Attorney tried to guide the questioning.
“You’re not controlling this anymore,” Dennison said
Tally Smith testified that video would not have made a difference in her case and would not have been exculpatory evidence for Dooley’s trial defense team. She has claimed all along that the trial defense team received the video, but Roach, Pugh and others testified that all they got was a video player.
If Schrand, who preside over Dooley’s murder trial, believes Tally Smith knew about the video and failed to ensure Dooley’s trial defense team saw it, it could be grounds for a new trial.
Jennifer Schneider, Michelle Mockbee’s sister, said she is confident the right man is in prison. David Wayne Dooley was convicted of killing Mockbee, but may be granted a new trial.
Reynolds also testified earlier in the hearing that a fork lift operator told him someone had been killed at the facility that day and he shared that information with Stahl in the interview. The same employee logged Reynolds out at 6:10 a.m., several minutes after a video shows him leaving.
Friday, Dennison suggested the fork lift operator may have done that to divert suspicion away from himself and toward someone else.
McVay was the last person called to testify and five days of testimony that was at times, grueling, exhausting and painful for members of both the Mockbee and Dooley families to hear, came to an end.
Outside the courtroom, Elizabeth Yates, Dooley’s mother, was cautiously optimistic as she spoke to reporters.
“I think it went really good for David,” Yates said. “I’m very happy with it. I’ll be glad when it’s all over and he can come home.”
Jennifer Schneider, Michelle Mockbee’s sister, said the affair between Tally Smith and McVay should not be a consideration and she is confident the right man is in jail. She read from a prepared statement.
“What happened to Michelle is never too far from our thoughts,” Schneider said. “She was an incredible woman. We all struggle every day dealing with what happened to her. Through all this drama, we never lose sight of the reason why we’re here, and that reason is to make sure that justice for Michelle remains.”
Attorney for both sides will file final briefs on or before April 27. Schrand will review the briefs, along with all of the evidence presented at trial, and determine if Dooley is granted a new trial.
Contact Mark Hansel at mark.hansel@nkytrib.com
