Eye Witness Changes Story Over Time:
Club Bouncer Testifies He Wants To Tell Truth Now

BY FRANK DeLOACHE
SALISBURY POST

In the end, no one but Rick Gaskey and Keith Thomas saw the end of their fatal confrontation, the final seconds before Gaskey shot Thomas once in the neck.

William "Don" Griffin, who worked as the bouncer at Gaskey's Silver Bullet nightclub, was only a few feet from both men when Gaskey's handgun fired. But Griffin testified Tuesday that as the argument between the two men escalated, he turned his back on them and put his head on his arm, against

Gaskey's front door, wondering, "What have I got myself into?"

When the shot sounded, Griffin dropped to his knee in the corner of the room before looking around.

When he finally turned, he said he saw Gaskey on his back on the floor and Thomas standing over him. But Thomas was recoiling backward. The China Grove man turned, looked at Griffin and said words to the effect of "I've been shot ... I'm going to die."

Thomas then stumbled and fell against a wall, quickly bleeding to death.

A grand jury indicted Gaskey for murder, but he and his attorneys contend the smaller Gaskey was defending himself after a drunken Thomas forced his way into Gaskey's apartment.

Griffin, the bouncer, and David Poole, the disc jockey at Gaskey's bar, were the only other people in Gaskey's apartment during the confrontation. Poole said he "freaked" and ran out the kitchen door just seconds before the fatal shot.

Griffin and Poole gave much the same account of the final confrontation between Thomas and Gaskey.

But even as he has given a number of statements about what he saw that night, his story also has changed several times.

Griffin admitted Tuesday that he "fabricated" one, possibly two stories, for sheriff's detectives. And he acknowledged that even as he testified Tuesday, he provided new details.

He told David Bingham, one of Gaskey's defense attorneys, that he's done "a lot of soul searching" since the early morning of Oct. 23, 1997. A lot of details have come back to him, he said, and he wanted to tell the truth.

During several hours of testimony, Griffin:

Admitted telling investigators initially that Thomas tried to grab a shotgun out of his hands just before Gaskey shot Thomas. That wasn't true.

When District Attorney Bill Kenerly asked why he lied, Griffin said, "I wish I had an answer for that. I don't have an answer. I honestly don't."

Told Kenerly he thought Gaskey, immediately after the shooting, had asked Griffin to make up a story about Thomas grabbing for the shotgun.

But later Tuesday, Gaskey's attorney contended, "You really don't know" what Gaskey said.

"No, I don't," Griffin replied.

Oddly enough, sheriff's deputy C.D. Williams, the first law enforcement officer at the apartment, said he immediately noticed a shotgun lying on the floor next to Thomas' left leg. None of the witnesses so far, nor the attorneys, has suggested how it got next to the dead man.

Apparently also told investigators initially that he had started up the stairway in Gaskey's apartment when the fatal shot was fired. That wasn't true.

In the end, however, Griffin said he himself was scared of Thomas, a tall, younger man with a reputation as a trained kickboxer, and that he did not try to get between Thomas and Gaskey.

Thomas and Gaskey first confronted each other earlier that night at Gaskey's bar, in the Day's Inn motel. Thomas had intervened between Gaskey and Gaskey's girlfriend, Tracey Tarleton, and other witnesses have testified that Thomas knocked Gaskey down with two leaping kicks to the chest.

Griffin did not see that confrontation. But later, after the Silver Bullet closed, Griffin returned to the apartment that he was sharing with Gaskey, at West Side Manor. Griffin said he was looking for something to eat in the kitchen when he heard a loud sound like the door knob slamming against the apartment wall.

Griffin heard Thomas say, "I'm going to kick your a--, you little son of a b----."

Then a scared Poole ran by Griffin, ducking into the kitchen.

Thomas advanced inside and Gaskey backed up, even as they yelled at each other. Gaskey asked Thomas repeatedly to leave.

Thomas "was talking a little out of his head," Griffin told prosecutor Kenerly. "What are you going to do, kill me? I'm ready to die."

Later under questioning from Bingham, Griffin quoted Thomas as saying: "I haven't ever amounted to nothing. I ain't ever going to amount to nothing. I've been ready to die since high school."

At one point, Griffin stepped outside to tell two of Thomas' friends that he thought the arguing men might be settling down. Then, he heard the voices escalate again, stepped inside and put his head in his arm against the inside of the door.

Then, he heard a "thump," like someone falling, and the gunshot.

Until the gun went off, Griffin testified that he had not noticed Gaskey holding the weapon, concentrating instead on Thomas and Thomas' friends outside.

And when he looked around after the shot, he thought at first that Gaskey was wounded because he was lying on the floor.

At one point, during hours of testimony, defense attorney Bingham noted that Griffin eased by Thomas to shut the front door. "Why didn't you just grab him by the collar and throw him out the door?"

Griffin, 43, could only say that Thomas was bigger, almost half Griffin's age and "trained in a style of fighting I knew nothing about." Griffin said he was hoping they could end the night without a physical confrontation.