Friend testifies Lisa Graham talked of wanting to kill daughter, Shea, before homicide

A childhood friend of Shea Graham’s testified mother Lisa Graham angrily talked of killing her daughter during a telephone call about a month before the 20-year-old was gunned down July 5, 2007 on a rural Russell County road.

Stephanie Vasquez, 31, traveled from Beaumont, Calif., to serve as a prosecution witness Thursday in the capital murder trial of Lisa Graham, who’s accused of having family worker Kenneth Walton kill her daughter after loaning him her 9mm pistol.

Vasquez said she once lived near the Graham family’s Westside Court home in Phenix City and spent time with Shea Graham when both were children. They stayed in touch after Vasquez was placed in foster care because of her mother’s drug addiction, she testified.

Because Lisa Graham was her mother’s best friend, Vasquez as an adult called her about every six months to get updates on her mother’s whereabouts, she said.

Lisa Graham was never pleased with Shea, even when her daughter was a child, Vasquez said: “Lisa was always very negative toward Shea. Shea could never do anything right.”

But the mother was far more negative when Vasquez called her in late May or early June 2007, she said. Vasquez, who was serving in the Army and had just returned from Germany, called Lisa Graham from Fort Smith, Ark., she testified.

“I remember the conversation very vividly,” said Vasquez, testifying the mother said of Shea: “I hate that f--king b---h,” and six or seven times said she wanted to kill her daughter.

“She was very persistent,” the witness said.

Vasquez testified the mother recounted twice pulling a gun on her daughter and said she wished she had pulled the trigger.

Asked if police were summoned to such confrontations, Vasquez said of Lisa Graham: “She said on one of those occasions, the police had got there too soon.”

Vasquez said that when she learned Shea Graham had been killed, she called the Russell County Sheriff to report what Lisa Graham had told her.

Also testifying Thursday was a friend of Shea Graham’s who was with her earlier on the night she was killed.

John McMillian said he, his girlfriend and a man with the nickname “Rat Boy,” who was living with Shea Graham, were riding around in her Toyota 4Runner as the women shopped.

Sometime after dark, Shea Graham told her friends she had to stop at a RaceTrac service station on Victory Drive. They were smoking marijuana in the parking lot when Walton pulled up in his Chevrolet pickup.

“I’m going to leave with Kenny,” McMillian said Shea Graham told her friends. Later he said: “She trusted Kenny that much, to leave with him.”

Her trust was misplaced: Walton testified Wednesday that he was there to lure Shea Graham away to kill her.

Despite his own insidious intent, he at the RaceTrac expressed disapproval of his target’s friends smoking marijuana in her Toyota.

“He always messed with us a little bit,” McMillian said of Walton. He said Walton reached through a window to smack him on the back of the head, noting they were “smoking weed” and warning them they’d better not damage the Toyota.

McMillian said Shea Graham told his girlfriend that she and Walton were going to “hit a lick,” street lingo for committing a crime.

Walton testified Wednesday that he enticed Shea Graham to leave with him by promising to get her a car in which to leave town, to flee assault charges she faced in a drive-by shooting in Columbus. That’s one reason Lisa Graham wanted her daughter killed, he said: She and her husband Kevin Graham had put up a $100,000 bond to get the daughter out of jail, and the mother feared the daughter would skip court and forfeit the money.

McMillian said Shea Graham left her keys, cell phone and the Toyota with his girlfriend, who with the two men drove away from the service station. Three times Shea Graham called her cell phone during the night to say she would be delayed, he said.

In her last call at 10:45 or 11 p.m., she told his girlfriend that they should go to her mobile home on Westside Court and wait for her, McMillian said.

They never heard from her again, he said. Testimony Wednesday showed a truck driver found her body at 11:12 p.m. Eastern Time.

Her friends waited about an hour at the mobile home before McMillian and his girlfriend returned to their house in Columbus, he said. “Rat Boy” remained at the trailer until about 2 a.m. before showing up at their house to say he was leaving the Toyota there and spending the night at a nearby residence.

McMillian said he called Walton’s cell phone that night to ask where Shea Graham was, and Walton claimed he left her at the RaceTrac.

The next day, McMillian and his girlfriend drove the Toyota to Westside Court where the Grahams lived next to their daughter. They told Lisa Graham her daughter was missing, and asked for a ride home so they could leave the Toyota.

“She kind of blew it off,” McMillian said of the mother’s reaction to hearing they’d lost touch with her daughter. On the ride to Columbus, Lisa Graham said of Shea: “Well, she’s probably dead somewhere,” McMillian testified.

Another witness Thursday was Dr. Stephen Boudreau, the forensic pathologist who conducted Shea Graham’s autopsy.

He said she had one bullet wound to the back of the head on the right side, and a wound to her right eye from a bullet fired at close range.

She had three wounds to the right side of her torso, one just a graze, he said.

Walton testified Wednesday that he drove Shea Graham to Bowden Road near Pittsview, where they stopped to relieve themselves. First he urinated behind his truck, got Lisa Graham’s 9mm pistol from where he’d hidden it under a chain in the truck bed, and got back into the driver’s seat.

Then Shea Graham opened the passenger’s door and squatted beside the truck, and from the driver’s seat he shot her in the head, then got out and shot her repeatedly.

The multiple shots were unnecessary, Boudreau testified: The head wounds were sufficient. “The brain was completely disrupted from the two gunshot wounds,” he said.

None of the bullets lodged in the body; all traveled through it, he said. Sheriff’s investigators collected some of the projectiles from the sandy road where the half-nude body lay.

That evidence went to Ed Moran, who at the state crime lab conducted ballistics tests on Lisa Graham’s pistol. Investigators got the pistol from a neighbor who said Lisa Graham had given him the gun to clean. Walton testified he had returned the weapon to Lisa Graham the day after he killed her daughter.

Moran said his tests confirmed that two of four cartridge cases authorities found by the body and four bullets recovered there came from the Springfield 9mm. Tests of other evidence from the crime scene proved inconclusive, he said.

This story was originally published February 26, 2015 at 5:23 PM.