Columbus man killed friend for alleged affair with wife. Is it murder or manslaughter?
Ruben “Rich” Hensley thought his estranged wife was having sex with his best friend, and that’s why he gunned the other man down outside a home on Columbus’ Urban Avenue in 2021, his defense attorney said.
Hensley had been working out of town for a solar energy company, often driving to Atlanta to fly to work sites in other states. While he was gone, his wife Jasmine Hall and friend Marjester “Marty” Thornton grew increasingly close.
When Hensley discovered how close they’d become, on Sept. 25, 2021, he drove from Atlanta to Columbus and started looking for them, calling Hall repeatedly and fuming when she did not answer, attorney Jennifer Curry said during Hensley’s murder trial this week in Muscogee Superior Court.
He also called Thornton, who was on the phone with Hensley as he walked out of his parents’ Urban Avenue home around 9:30 p.m.
A neighbor’s security camera recorded the noise that came next: Three booming gunshots, apparently from a rifle; a car speeding away; and the screams as Thornton’s family found him dying outside.
Two witnesses said the car they saw racing away was a red Mustang.
When Hall got there, in about 30 minutes, she called Hensley. “I told him that Marty was gone and they were saying he did it,” she testified. She also told him his red Mustang had been caught on camera.
Around 1 a.m., Hensley’s car was found on fire on Moye Road. Inside it police found a shell casing for a .223-caliber rifle round.
A medical examiner testified the bullet that killed Thornton could have been of that caliber. It entered through his top right shoulder and traveled down through his body, indicating he was leaning down or ducking when it hit him. It fractured a rib and four of the 12 bones in his spine.
To have done that much damage, it must have been a “high-velocity round,” the pathologist said.
Hall, who married Hensley in August 2019 and did not divorce him until this past March 6, said she and Thornton were just close friends. They had never been lovers, she testified.
The prosecutor, Meghan Bowden, said no evidence proved the two ever had an affair.
On Friday, she argued to Judge Bobby Peters that jurors should not be given the option of convicting Hensley on voluntary manslaughter, which would mean he killed Thornton, 37, in a sudden, irresistible passion. “It’s all speculation,” Bowden said.
Peters rejected that, saying he needed to give the jury that option to avoid the case coming back on appeal.
That’s where the evidence stood Friday morning, as the attorneys gave their closing arguments.
The defense
Curry said ample evidence indicated Hall and Thornton had more than just a close friendship: The pair were in frequent communication, having meals together, doing favors for each other, going out together, and planning trips out of town together.
They also warned each other when Hensley was coming home from working out of town, Curry said.
Each time Hensley came home, to stay with his wife, Hall and Thornton stopped texting each other, she noted, and the messaging resumed when Hensley left town again.
Then came September 2021, when Hensley learned something that triggered him, causing him to rush home from Atlanta and to call Thornton 10 times and Hall 16 times. He got no answer until that night, when finally he got Thornton on the phone.
The calls started at 10:30 a.m., and continued all day, Curry said. Hensley grew increasingly frustrated, she said.
He got Thornton on the phone at 9 p.m., and they spoke for 26 minutes, before the gunfire.
“It happened so fast,” Curry told jurors, arguing Hensley lost his composure upon seeing Thornton, and afterward panicked when he heard police were looking for his car.
Besides the alleged affair, Hensley further was provoked by Thornton’s giving Hall advice on dating other men Hensley knew, Curry said.
She did not deny that Hensley killed Thornton, arguing only that it was not premeditated, but a sudden act of rage.
“This isn’t malice murder,” she told the jury. “This is voluntary manslaughter.”
The prosecution
Bowden reminded jurors they’d heard no definitive evidence that Thornton and Hall were anything other than friends, as their messages conveyed no romantic intent.
“The only evidence you heard about Marty was that he was a perfect gentleman,” she said, noting Thornton had been a faithful friend to both Hensley and Hall. Turning to Thornton’s growing close with Hall, she added: “We don’t have any evidence other than it was a close personal relationship.”
That the killing was premeditated should be obvious, she argued: Hensley had to drive here from Atlanta, which typically takes 90 minutes to two hours, and then had the rest of day to travel around Columbus, looking for Thornton and Hall.
That left him “sufficient time to cool off,” she said, and that means he did not shoot Thornton in a “sudden, violent, irresistible passion.”
He stalked Thornton that night, parking his car down the street and waiting, with his headlights off, and then moving the Mustang when a witness saw him, Bowden argued. “He hunted Marty down all day long.... He did it in the cover of night, and he fired at him three times.”
Anyone concerned about gun violence in Columbus should know that a gunman cannot lie in wait for his target, and then ambush the unarmed victim outside his home, she said.
She asked jurors to find Hensley guilty on all counts: malice or deliberate murder, felony murder for killing Thornton while committing felony aggravated assault, aggravated assault, first-degree arson, and using a gun to commit a crime.
Hensley also was indicted on a misdemeanor tampering with evidence charge, but Bowden dropped that count because the two-year statute of limitations had expired.
If found guilty, Hensley faces life in prison. He is 32 years old.
This story was originally published March 15, 2024 at 2:09 PM.