Junkies and junk science.
That’s how Scott Goodwin-Bey’s defense attorney described the state’s case against him in her opening remarks to the jury Monday morning, Sept. 9.
Goodwin-Bey, 57, is facing four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of armed criminal action.
Goodwin-Bey’s trial is expected to continue through this week in Judge Joshua Christensen’s courtroom. If convicted, Goodwin-Bey faces life in prison; this is not a death-penalty case.
Goodwin-Bey is accused of shooting four people to death inside Room 149 at what is now the Glenstone Place motel on North Glenstone Avenue on Nov. 15, 2014. The victims were Trevor Fantroy, 43; Lewis Green, 44; Danielle Keyes, 29; and Christopher Freeman, 24.
Defense attorney Hannah Kahn called into question the credibility of a prosecution witness, Edward Bufford, who is expected to testify that he was present when Goodwin-Bey started shooting. Kahn also questioned the reliability of the ballistics evidence linking Goodwin-Bey’s gun to bullets and casings found at the scene and in the autopsies.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW:
Jury selected, trial begins for man accused of 2014 quadruple homicide at Springfield motel
A jury was selected on Friday and trial began Monday for a man accused of a 2014 quadruple homicide.
by Jackie Rehwald
“Ladies and gentlemen, the evidence you will hear in this case boils down to nothing more than dopers and distractions, stoners and stories,” Kahn said to the eight-woman and six-man jury. “The evidence will show that the state’s case consists of nothing more than junkies and junk science.”
Greene County First Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Kim Pulley gave opening remarks for the state, telling the jury about witnesses expected to testify during the trial. One is a woman named Jessica Dorney. Dorney was staying in a different room at the Economy Inn at the time of the shootings and knew the people involved, including Goodwin-Bey.
Pulley said Dorney will testify that she saw Goodwin-Bey with a gun on Nov. 14, 2014 and that he had been “making paranoid statements about people being out to get him.”
“That night he was in the room with her. He eventually leaves that room and, not long after, he leaves the room, she hears multiple pops,” Pulley said. “Almost immediately after that she hears banging on the door and the defendant’s voice. She doesn’t open the door right away. And when she does, there’s blood on the door.
“(A few days later) he told her he went to confront Danielle (Keyes) and other people got into his business,” Pulley said.
Pulley also spoke about what she expects Bufford to say on the stand.
“(Bufford) will tell you that the defendant was making paranoid statements about people tracking him on his cell phone, that while they were in Room 149, Mr. Goodwin-Bey made statements about everybody being on their phone and that agitated him,” Pulley said. “That is when he startedshooting them one after another.”
Pulley said clerks who were working at the StarMart gas station on Chestnut Expressway will testify that 15 days after the murders, Goodwin-Bey came into the gas station and was acting strangely. While in the gas station, Goodwin-Bey placed a gun on the counter, Pulley said, and the clerk took it and called 911.
According to Pulley, a firearms expert test fired the gun, compared those test-fire bullets and shell casings to those found at the scene and taken from the victims’ bodies during autopsies and determined they were a match.
Investigators said early on they believed Goodwin-Bey shot the four victims because he believed they were informing police about his drug use.
Goodwin-Bey was initially charged in 2015, but prosecutors dropped the charges in 2016 after now-retired Judge Calvin Holden ruled Goodwin-Bey’s gun could not be incontrovertibly connected to bullets found at the scene.
Goodwin-Bey had been in federal prison on an illegal gun charge since 2017, but was transferred to the Greene County Jail in February 2023 to face murder charges in circuit court following a grand jury indictment.
Following a hearing in August at which multiple experts weighed in on the reliability of firearms evidence, Judge Christensen ruled the evidence was admissible.
The Springfield Daily Citizen will publish more stories about Goodwin-Bey’s trial as it unfolds this week.
