Killer’s girlfriend testifies
The girlfriend of confessed killer Joey Moses told a jury Thursday she secretly wore a “wire” and agreed to have cell phone conversations recorded as she helped federal agents build a case against a second man implicated in a 2006 home-invasion murder on the Spokane Indian Reservation.
Virginia Green, her voice breaking at times, also told a U.S. District Court jury that she had telephone contact with Moses after he fled the area days after he fatally shot Gary Flett Jr. on June 1, 2006.
“He was in California and I told him to come back,” Green testified on the fourth day of the trial of Norman Ford Jr. He is charged with first-degree murder, first-degree burglary and use of a firearm during a crime of violence.
After Moses was arrested by federal agents on June 4, 2006, Green said she agreed to wear a hidden FBI recording device when she went to meet “my best friend” Naomi Stearns, who was Ford’s fiancée. Two or three other phone calls between the two were recorded.
That information and Moses’ willingness to speak with federal investigators six months after his arrest led to charging Ford with first-degree murder. Initially, he was charged with being an accessory.
Moses concluded testifying against Ford earlier Thursday, hoping to avoid life in prison and getting 18 to 25 years as part of a plea bargain for his role in the middle-of-the-night, execution-style murder.
When defense attorney Mark Vovos asked Moses if he had even talked about kicking in a door and shooting someone, the witness said he couldn’t ever recall making such a statement.
“Didn’t you make a CD about shooting people with a gun?” Vovos then asked Moses, who remembered he had made the music disc and written such lyrics.
“Did you sell the CD to people on the reservation?” the defense attorney then asked.
The judge stopped Moses from answering that question after the prosecutor objected.
Vovos then asked Moses about trading crack cocaine to get the 9mm handgun.
“Are you a drug dealer?” Vovos attempted to ask Moses.
The prosecutor again objected, the judge sustained and the question went unanswered.
Another witness, Dr. Marco Ross, said there were three bullet entrance wounds on Flett’s body, and he died from internal bleeding after one of the slugs pierced his aorta.
Green, Moses’ girlfriend, also testified that Flett had assaulted her at a party in the weeks prior to the shooting when her boyfriend wasn’t present.
“He got upset but he didn’t do anything,” Green said of Moses.
“Did he stick up for you?” the prosecutor asked.
“No, he didn’t,” the witness responded, later saying “the whole reservation” knew Moses was afraid of Flett.
Moses was so afraid, Green testified, that he mostly stayed at home, and the couple wouldn’t dare be seen at social gatherings on the reservation.
She said she hadn’t seen Moses for a couple of weeks before the shooting, but that he spoke with her on the telephone during the early morning hours that day. “He was drunk,” Green testified.
After his return from California, Green said she met Moses at his aunt’s house in northeast Spokane and urged him to surrender to FBI and BIA agents who had interviewed her. Moses had been identified as the shooter by Ford, who went to authorities the day after the shooting, not implicating himself.