SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) – Testimony is underway following opening statements Thursday morning in the trial of the Shreveport man accused in the slaying of a local couple who gave him a ride from the mall after he asked to borrow their cell phone.
DeWayne Willie Watkins, 37, is charged in the November 2018 murders of 32-year-old Heather Angela King Jose and her husband, 43-year-old Kelly Dean Jose.
Prosecutors say he shot them both after they gave him a ride from Mall St. Vincent and withdrew money from an ATM for him on the night of the slayings before burning their bodies inside a vehicle in the carport of a vacant home in the Queensborough neighborhood, hoping to destroy evidence.
In addition, Caddo Parish Assistant District Attorney Bill Edwards told the jury during opening statements that the State believes Watkins dumped the .22 caliber gun used to kill the couple into a bucket of water inside a home down the street from where the Joses’ charred bodies were found.
In the defense’s opening statement, attorney Mariah Holder of New Orleans emphasized Watkins’ innocence, claiming although the Joses did give Watkins a ride, they dropped him off at a home on Penick Street – the same block where the Joses’ charred bodies were found, but they were alive and well when they dropped him off.
The defense also claimed the prosecution’s witnesses were criminals, one of whom had a warrant for his arrest for aggravated battery after shooting his girlfriend in the arm during a domestic incident.
The prosecution made no bones about some of the witnesses’ criminal records, with Edwards saying, “You can’t choose your witnesses.”
Two witnesses were called out-of-place following opening statements because of availability issues. One was Shreveport Sgt. Nick Ardoin, who at the time of the Jose murders was also an agent for the U. S. Marshal’s Office; the other, Mark Phipps, a regional coach for 30 Pizza Huts in Shreveport and East Texas.
Phipps, who is leaving town Thursday night, identified and provided surveillance video from the night of the Joses’ death, which was taken from the Pizza Hut at the corner of Greenwood Road and Jewella Avenue.
Though also an SPD officer at the time, he was the U.S. Marshal’s agent who executed the warrant for Watkins’ arrest at the Penick Street location after he was identified as a suspect. Ardoin described the circumstances around Watkins’ arrest, which included a several-hour stand-off.
Ardoin is scheduled to leave the country Friday, so his testimony was taken to accommodate those plans.
Jury selection began on Aug. 22, but the process was halted the next day after Watkins tested positive for COVID. Voire dire resumed Monday. It wasn’t the first time the trial had been delayed due to COVID.
The case, which has been winding through Caddo District Court for more than three years, has been delayed multiple times, starting with the Caddo Parish grand jury upgrading Watkin’s original second-degree murder charges to first-degree murder in a Feb. 14, 2019 indictment. The trial had to be rescheduled in February 2022 under a court order issued in January postponing all jury trials until at least March 1 due to COVID concerns.
Watkins is charged with two counts of first-degree murder, which is punishable by life in prison or the death penalty but Caddo Parish District Attorney James Stewart reversed course in early 2021, taking the death penalty option off the table in an effort to move the case along.
