Key witness says man pardoned by Bevin didn’t recruit him to rob drug dealer
The defense of a Kentucky man pardoned in a state homicide but facing a federal murder charge in the same death got a boost Monday when a witness raised the likelihood that other people committed the crime.
The defense witness, Joshua Spencer, testified that two brothers from Knox County, Adam and Elijah Messer, asked him several times to rob Donald Mills, who dealt in large quantities of pain pills.
Patrick Baker is charged with murdering Mills, but Spencer backed up Baker’s story that Adam Messer, not Baker, was the actual killer.
Spencer testified that Adam Messer approached him the final time a day or two before Mills’ death to recruit him. At one point, Messer called him a profane name when he wouldn’t sign on to the robbery plan, Spencer said.
Mills was killed when two men invaded his home in May 2014 seeking drugs and money.
Spencer said that afterward, Messer threatened him to watch what he said about the crime.
Spencer said he also told Kentucky State Police that the Messers’ plan included posing as police officers during the robbery — a detail that had not been released publicly at that point.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jenna Reed said Spencer did not give police information about Adam Messer soon after the shooting in 2014, raising the idea he had changed his story, but Spencer insisted he did tell police about Messer.
Messer has denied shooting Mills.
Baker, 43, was convicted in state court in 2017 in Mills’ death and sentenced to 19 years in prison, but then-Gov. Matt Bevin pardoned him just two years later in December 2019.
Federal authorities later brought a charge against Baker that he murdered Mills during a drug-trafficking crime.
The case has drawn considerable attention because members of Baker’s family had held a political fundraising event for Bevin in 2018.
Democratic state lawmakers who sought an investigation of the pardon alleged it raised an appearance of corruption, but Bevin adamantly denied politics or money had anything to do with the pardon, one of hundreds of pardons and commutations he granted late in his term.
Baker’s attorneys argued it was improper to try him again in Mills’ death.
However, U.S. District Judge Claria Horn Boom ruled that it was not improper. The current federal charge against Baker includes a different element than the the earlier state charge, Boom noted.
Witnesses have testified that Baker recruited them to rob Mills. One confessed accomplice, Christopher Wagner, testified he went with Baker to rob Mills, and that Baker told him he shot Mills after Mills unexpectedly drew a gun.
Baker’s ex-wife testified he told her he killed Mills.
However, Baker said his ex-wife was confused, that other witnesses lied, and that Wagner told him Adam Messer killed Mills using Baker’s gun.
Defense attorneys have worked to point out inconsistencies in the stories of some prosecution witnesses.
In other testimony Monday, Tristan Hibbard, a friend of Mills’ sons who was staying at their house the morning of the homicide, acknowledged he told police in 2014 that one of the men involved in the home invasion had a skull-and-crossbones tattoo on his arm and that he thought one of the robbers was named Adam.
Messer has a similar tattoo, while Baker does not, defense attorneys have pointed out.
Hibbard, who was 11 at the time of the shooting, said he was scared while talking to police.
One of Mills’ sons testified previously that Wagner kept him, his mother, his brother and Hibbard in a back bedroom during the robbery, and that they couldn’t have seen what was happening in the other end of the house where Mills was shot.
Sabrina Christian, a forensic biologist at the Kentucky State Police crime laboratory, testified that blood samples from the crime scene and a pair of toy handcuffs in Mills’ bedroom did not include DNA from Baker or Wagner.
Christian said there was DNA from an unknown person in samples, but no match turned up to a DNA profile from Adam Messer that was in the database from an earlier crime.
The case is scheduled to go to the jury Tuesday for a decision. Baker faces up to life in prison if convicted.
This story was originally published August 23, 2021 at 1:19 PM.
