More witnesses testify to hearing Lisa Graham talk of wanting her daughter killed

More witnesses in the capital murder trial of Lisa Graham testified Friday to hearing her say she wanted her daughter Stephanie Shea Graham killed, including her estranged husband Kevin Graham, father of the 20-year-old found gunned down July 5, 2007.

Kevin Graham said Kenneth Walton, who pleaded guilty to killing Shea Graham before the mother went on trial, told him twice before the homicide that Lisa Graham kept asking him to kill Shea. But Kevin Graham said he didn’t think Walton would do it.

Walton worked for the Grahams’ construction company until Kevin Graham fired him two days before the slaying, the dismissal resulting from a confrontation over Walton’s damaging a company truck, the father said. Walton had worked for the Grahams’ since August 2004.

Lisa Graham’s now being tried on allegations she recruited Walton to kill her daughter.

Like some other witnesses to take the stand since testimony in the trial started Wednesday, Kevin Graham said his wife’s talking about killing or having her daughter killed was not uncommon, nor was her discussing such matters with Walton.

“There wasn’t a day you’d go into the office that she and him wasn’t talking about killing somebody,” the husband said.

The mother and daughter were known to have furious confrontations, he said: “They did not get along at all.” He recalled pulling into his driveway one day to see his wife ranting out in the yard, armed with a pistol, and his daughter wielding a knife. He quelled the dispute and sent his daughter home to a house trailer she occupied near her parents’ Westside Court home in Phenix City.

Also testifying Friday were two former neighbors who said they recalled hearing the mother talk about having her daughter killed.

Stephen Hemilburger, who lived across the street from the family, testified he once visited the Grahams around midnight to inform them their daughter was brandishing a knife as she chased her boyfriend outside her mobile home. He warned them witnesses might call the police.

He said Kevin Graham left the house to resolve the dispute, leaving him with Lisa Graham, who offered him $5,000 to kill Shea Graham, saying she wanted “the little b---h dead.” He thought she might be joking until she said it again, “and I told her she was nuts,” he said.

Rachel Cunningham said she lived near the Grahams before moving to Birmingham, Ala., in 2006, and once helped Lisa Graham with a genealogy project. She was in the Grahams’ home office when she had a question for Lisa Graham, whom she found outside talking to Walton, she said.

Though both saw her come out of the house, they did not acknowledge her presence, and continued talking about the logistics of Walton’s killing the daughter, such as where he and Lisa Graham might meet, how quickly the homicide could be completed and how to clean up afterward, she said.

Yet Cunningham, like other witnesses, did not report what she overheard, and did not find it all that unusual, she said: “Lisa used to talk about killing Shea all the time.”

Prosecutors allege that the night Walton killed Shea Graham, the mother met him in the genealogy department of the Columbus Public Library on Macon Road, where she gave him the keys to her Chevrolet Avalanche, told him to take her 9mm pistol and leave her keys under the floor mat.

Walton said he hid the gun under a chain in the bed of his Chevrolet pickup, met Shea Graham and some of her friends at a Victory Drive gas station, and lured her to leave with him by promising to give her a car in which to leave town.

Shea Graham was due in court in Columbus the next morning to face assault charges in a drive-by shooting. Her parents had put up a $100,000 bond to get her out of jail, and the mother feared her daughter would skip court and forfeit that bond, Walton testified Wednesday.

He drove Shea Graham to Bowden Road near Pittsview and shot her twice in the head and four times in the torso as she squatted beside his truck to relieve herself, and the next day returned the gun to Lisa Graham, who gave it to a neighbor to clean.

A truck driver found the daughter’s body at 11:12 p.m. Eastern Time, and called 911. She had no identification on her, so crime lab technicians in Montgomery identified her through fingerprints the next day.

Investigators arrested Walton after he confessed to the crime, and charged Lisa Graham after Walton implicated her. They said she aroused more suspicion when she claimed she didn’t know where the gun was and let them searched her house and vehicle for an hour before her husband contacted the neighbor, who surrendered the weapon he said she’d given him to clean.

Ballistics tests matched the gun to cartridge casings and bullets recovered at the crime scene, according to testimony.

After hours of testimony Friday morning, Circuit Judge Jacob Walker III dismissed the jury for the day so attorneys could argue which portions of recorded interviews with Lisa Graham were admissible in the trial, which is to resume Monday at 9 a.m.

This story was originally published February 27, 2015 at 5:18 PM with the headline "More witnesses testify to hearing Lisa Graham talk of wanting her daughter killed."