Nov 23, 2008 1:28 pm US/Eastern
Killing Of Disabled Man Troubles Small N.H. Town
John Curran, AP Writer
HAVERHILL, N.H. (AP) ―
Christopher Gray didn't deserve to die. Even his alleged killer says so.
Developmentally disabled but outgoing and active, the 25-year-old Wal-Mart cashier left work one night last month with two co-workers and another person. Later that night, he was stabbed to death outside a mobile home in what suspect Timothy Smith called a fight but prosecutors say was the culmination of a murder plot weeks in the making.
The killing has led to four arrests and shaken communities in a hardscrabble swath of north country along the New Hampshire-Vermont border. The question on many minds: Why kill Christopher Gray?
Neither police nor the prosecutor in the case -- Deputy Attorney General Lucy Carrillo -- will discuss motive, and court documents make no mention of one.
"If there's one person in the world you'd never expect anybody to kill, it's Chris Gray," said friend Joshua Harrington, 30. "He had a personality like nobody else."
Two young sweethearts -- Amber Talbot, 17, and boyfriend Michael Robie, 18 -- are charged with conspiring in the murder plot. Smith, 23, is accused of second-degree murder, and Anthony Howe, 18, is charged with hindering apprehension.
Smith, who initially denied any link to Gray's death, later confessed to it, even writing a handwritten letter addressed to "to the family of Chris."
"My name is Timothy Smith and I would like to say sorry for your loss. Me & Chris ended up getting into a fight and I ended up stabbing him. I came out clean and told the cops about everything. He was a very good guy and he didn't deserve it. I am very very sorry for what I have done. He didn't deserve what I did to him. He was a hard worker. Thanks, Timothy Smith."
By any measure, Gray was an unlikely victim.
One of three children, he was born with handicaps -- a speech impediment, an IQ under 70, attention deficit disorder -- and grew up in Bradford, Vt., attending schools with programs aimed at helping troubled children.
An aspiring auto mechanic, he spent much of his childhood in state custody in Vermont before working a succession of jobs -- fast food and retail -- in which he sometimes struggled because he hid his disabilities from his employers.
He signed on at a Wal-Mart, working as a cashier. "He was regarded as a very good associate," said Wal-Mart spokesman Dan Fogleman.
Talbot worked in the health and beauty aids section of the store, Smith at a Subway sandwich shop in the same building.
He knew them but wasn't friends with any of them, according to Annie Crowley, 36, of Groton, Vt., a care provider at Upper Valley Services who got to know Gray as a client and later became his legal guardian.
When he finished work Oct. 6, Gray was picked up by Talbot, Smith and Howe, who drove him to the rundown trailer in Haverhill that the three shared.
"Leaving with these kids and going to that house, he wouldn't sense -- like you or I might have -- that it might be dangerous, that they may not be his friends," said Crowley.
"A lot of times, he needed help like that. He'd get involved with kids who were trouble and they'd get him to do something that they would never do. He was a little bit of a guinea pig sometimes. There had to be a reason why they went with him," Crowley said.
Once there, Smith told Talbot to go to her mother's house next door and stay there, according to an affidavit filed by police Cpl. Wallace Trott.
According to Smith, he and Gray got into a fight in which Smith stabbed Gray five to 10 times with a six-inch blade. He told police he dragged the body to a barn, then moved it again the next morning, wrapping it in a green blanket and burying it in a hole.
Smith, who said he'd used cocaine and drank a 12-pack of beer that night, told police "I did it."
But Howe told a different story, according to an affidavit filed by New Hampshire State Police investigators. Howe said he grabbed Gray just before the killing and told Smith: "Do it now."
It's the "why" that puzzles people.
"People don't just do this for no reason, unless they're whacked," Crowley said. "The hardest part for us is we don't know why."
Crowley says she has been told by people in the community that the baby Talbot gave birth to in September was fathered by Gray.
"This summer, he come in here and said something about he might've knocked up some girl who was 16," said Harrington, of Topsham, Vt., who often worked on his race car with Gray. "I never put two and two together until this," he said last week.
Talbot's attorney, George Ostler, said he couldn't shed any light on what happened.
"We haven't gotten full discovery, so I don't know what the state's theory is," he said.
According to police investigators, Robie -- who was in jail when the killing occurred -- talked by phone with Smith and Talbot in September and early October about killing Gray. The substance of those conversations hasn't been made public.
"The hard part for me is that I feel responsible," said Crowley. "I was supposed to be caring for him. I felt like `What could I have done?' But he needed to be an adult, and he was with it enough to be an adult and make his own decisions."
(© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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