By Shavonne Potts
spotts@salisburypost.com
When Jimmie Edgar Musselwhite didn’t answer his phone or come to his door Nov. 16, 2006, friend Kathy McBride became concerned.
McBride went into the 62-year-old man’s home and discovered he was dead.
“How did you know he was dead?” Rowan District Attorney Bill Kenerly asked.
The back of Musselwhite’s head was black, and he didn’t move, McBride said Wednesday in court.
Musselwhite had been beaten with his own baseball bat. He had been stabbed with a knife and his throat cut. His hands were bound behind his back with duct tape. His mouth was partially covered with duct tape.
McBride backed out of Musselwhite’s home. She went to her friend, Ronnie Gaultney, who also knew Musselwhite, to ask what she should do.
They called 911.
Bradley Paul Blymyer, 25, is on trial for the murder. Blymyer could receive life in prison if found guilty. His friend Joshua Shaffer, 25, is also charged in Musselwhite’s death, and prosectors say he will testify against Blymyer in exchange for a reduction in his charge to second-degree murder.
McBride testified she knew Shaffer through Gaultney’s son, also named Ronnie. The two young men worked together at Freightliner.
She said Shaffer always hung around the Gaultney house, but she’d never seen Blymyer. McBride said it was clear to her that Musselwhite did not like Shaffer.
Prosecutors say Blymyer and Shaffer went to Musselwhite’s house to buy prescription painkillers, but he refused to sell, and that’s why they killed him.
McBride said she didn’t know Musselwhite sold his prescription medications.
Musselwhite’s daughter, Sherry Ritter, testified that she did know, but she did not approve.
Ritter testified that she told her father she “didn’t believe in that.”
Musselwhite told Ritter he did it for financial reasons and that it was just a couple of pills, she said.
Ritter said the last time she saw her father was June 10, when they went to a family gathering. She said her father suffered pain in his legs caused by his labor in textile mills, where he worked his whole life.
He was due for another surgery. He already had two stints in place.
Musselwhite also used a cane every now and then.
“He just kind of walked like an old man,” Ritter said.
Musselwhite kept two things in his home to protect himself, his daughter said: her grandfather’s 12-gauge shotgun and a Louisville Slugger baseball bat.
The shotgun he kept in a corner near his favorite chair, the bat by the door. It was the bat used to hit Musselwhite repeatedly in the head.
He was struck at least five times.
Investigators dusted the bat and knife used to kill Musselwhite and other items at the home for fingerprints, but found no usable ones.
Sgt. Chad Moose, a detective with the Rowan County Sheriff’s Office, testified that investigators lifted smudges, but no definitive fingerprints, from Musselwhite’s Verlen Drive home the day his body was discovered.
Moose said, however, that investigators did find DNA left behind inside a green latex glove that was later positively matched to a DNA sample from Blymyer already on file.
Investigator also made plaster casts of two sets of partial footprints found outside of Musselwhite’s home. Investigators matched the prints to a Reebok tennis shoe and a Lugz work boot.
Blymyer’s attorney, Ken Darty, asked Moose if the shoes matched any worn by his client. Moose said they did not. None of the duct tape found at Blymyer’s parents’ house or in Shaffer’s car matched the tape used to bind Musselwhite’s hands.
Moose said what investigators had initially thought was blood on the ceiling was actually an old stain.
The detective went over some of the other evidence collected at the scene, including Musselwhite’s wallet, which contained no money.
Forensic pathologist Dr. Thomas Owens said Musselwhite’s death was caused by a combination of the knife wounds and the injuries he suffered when beaten with the bat in his head and neck.
Owens said there is no definitive way to determine when Musselwhite died, but based on the decomposition of his body, it could have been anywhere from four to seven days before he was discovered.
He described each individual cut to Musselwhite’s body, including how deep and which was lethal.
Kenerly asked if any of those cuts could’ve cause the blood spatter that was found in parts of the house including on the TV and bar.
Owens said none of Musselwhite’s wounds bled to the point it would propel blood from his body. The blood vessels were small and would most likely leak slowly.
It’s more likely, he said, the spatter was a result of “cast-off,” which happens when an object that has blood on it is flung or moved rapidly, causing the blood to fly onto another object.
Kenerly asked Owens if the blood loss Musselwhite suffered could’ve rendered him unconscious. Owens said it could, but that could have taken between 10 and 20 minutes.
“Is it difficult to say if he was dead when the cut to his throat was made?” Kenerly asked.
Owens said it was. He also said Musselwhite suffered a basal skull fracture, which no one ever survives. The fracture to the back of his head near his brain stem would cause so much damage that survival was nearly impossible.
The trial resumes today at 9:30 a.m.