Gaskey Won't Take The Stand:
Jury's Call:Self-Defense Or Murder?

BY FRANK DeLOACHE
SALISBURY POST

Was Rick Gaskey scared to death of Keith Thomas and only defending himself against a larger man and a belligerent drunk?

Or did Rick Gaskey wait until he could get Keith Thomas into his apartment, surrounded by two of Gaskey's "bodyguards," to shoot Thomas to death?

After six days of sometimes confusing, contradictory testimony, 12 jurors will finally get to decide who was the hunter and who the hunted the morning Thomas died on the floor of Gaskey's West Side Manor apartment.

A grand jury indicted Gaskey for murder, but his attorneys contend that he was defending himself in his own home.

The jurors will have to begin deliberations - likely late this morning - without hearing from the man who survived that fatal encounter early on Oct. 23, 1997. Sandwiched between his lawyers at the defense table Wednesday afternoon, an obviously nervous Gaskey chose not to testify, but not before looking back at the audience several times. Each time Gaskey raised his eyebrows or shrugged his shoulders, as if asking for a final word from family and friends sitting in four or five pews behind him.

Finally, at the request of Gaskey's own lawyers, Superior Court Judge W. Douglas Albright asked the defendant if he understood that he had the Constitutional right to testify or to refuse to testify.

"I've studied this for days, and there is no answer," Gaskey told the judge before finally deciding not to take the stand and face cross examination by District Attorney Bill Kenerly.

That left Kenerly and defense attorneys Jim Dooley and David Bingham to argue about the facts in their closing arguments.

"This killing did not need to happen," Kenerly told the jurors. "Gaskey had other things he could have done. He could have asked for help from (David) Poole and (Don) Griffin," two of Gaskey's employees who were inside the apartment that night.

"He could have called the police. He could have locked the door. But he chose to kill Keith Thomas."

Kenerly discounted testimony from Poole and Griffin that Gaskey feared Thomas. The prosecutor pointed to earlier that night at Gaskey's Silver Bullet bar, when Thomas kicked Gaskey in the chest, knocking him down in the parking lot. Gaskey ran quickly back into the bar, calling for Griffin, his bouncer, as Thomas chased him.

Kenerly noted that Griffin calmly blocked Thomas' path and faced Thomas down. Poole, the disc jockey and "back-up security" man, stopped other people, even threatening to break the arm of one of Thomas' friends.

Yet an hour or so later, Kenerly said, neither Griffin nor Poole moved to help Gaskey when Thomas came to Gaskey's apartment. Why? Kenerly asked.

Because both men knew Gaskey had his gun this time and they knew Gaskey could handle Thomas, the prosecutor argued. Poole didn't run from the apartment because he was afraid of Thomas, Kenerly surmised. He ran because Gaskey had his gun, and he knew the shooting was going to start.

Kenerly also pointed to evidence "that there was an attempt to cover up what happened there" - fabricated stories, an attempt to conceal Poole's involvement, changes at the scene.

"If he acted in self-defense, why would you let one of your witnesses leave?" Kenerly asked. "... Why would you want to change the evidence?"

Both sides also relied in part on the testimony of a disinterested party - Gaskey's next door neighbor Rashaan Smith. Awakened that night by all the commotion, Smith testified he heard a man - he couldn't identify the voice - say, "You're gonna die." Smith also heard the argument begin outside and move inside, Kenerly said, not as if someone forced open a door and then began arguing inside.

Smith also did not remember a key statement that Gaskey's two "bodyguards" attributed to Thomas, word for word: "I'm going to kick your a--, you little son of a b----."

In his closing argument, however, defense attorney Dooley cited a different part of Rashaan Smith's testimony. Smith said he heard a woman that night saying, "Come on, let's leave him alone." Then a man said, "Shut up!"

The woman had to be Tracey Tarleton, Gaskey's girlfriend and the reason the two men began arguing that night. Dooley theorized that she tried to stop Thomas as he headed toward Gaskey's apartment, but Thomas would have none of it.

"That was the whiskey talking," Dooley told the jurors Wednesday afternoon. And he pointed to the associate chief medical examiner's testimony earlier in the day that Thomas' blood alcohol level was .18, more than double the legal limit for driving.

"And that's drunk, folks," Dooley said. "... That's belligerent drunk."

The medical examiner testified that Thomas was 6-foot-4 - barefoot - and weighed 214 pounds. Gaskey stands about 5-foot-3 and weighs about 130 pounds, "a midget compared to Keith Thomas," Dooley said.

The defense attorney argued that Thomas, who trained as a kick boxer and told people he competed in tough man contests, was drunk and angry that Tarleton wouldn't go home with him that night. So instead of driving Tarleton to her apartment - also in the West Side Manor complex - he drove right onto the grass near Gaskey's apartment and jumped out of the car, leaving the door open and the motor running.

Pushing in through the door, Thomas gradually forced Gaskey back into his apartment until, Dooley theorized, Thomas kicked him again in the chest. Then Gaskey fired one shot that struck Thomas just above his right collarbone and severed a major artery, causing Thomas to bleed to death.

"A professional kick boxer who's all drunked up is making out with your girlfriend and then shows up with two other drunk friends" and forces his way into your home, Dooley told the jury. "How much do you have to take before you can respond?

"... What do you have to do in Rowan County to defend yourself and not be accused of murder?"

At another point, Dooley asked the jury, "Should he wait until he gets the mortal crap kicked out of him?"

And then Dooley reminded the jury that Gaskey soiled his pants twice the night that Thomas died.

When Thomas first karate-kicked him in the chest outside the Silver Bullet, Gaskey told others he urinated at the force of the blow. (He returned to his apartment to change his clothes.)

And when detective G.I. Hinson took Gaskey to the sheriff's office for an interview, he said he accompanied Gaskey to the restroom where the nightclub owner threw away his soiled underwear.