Pathologist Testifies in Trial
by San Antonio (AP)
A pathologist testified Thursday that there may have been 26 victims instead of 27 in the Houston mass murders case. Dr. Joseph Jachimczyk, the Harris County medical examiner from Houston, said John Manning Sellars, 17, may not have been a victim of the sex torture murder ring. Sellars’ body was found on the beach at High Island along with five others. Jachimczyk said Sellars was the only one of the 27 shot with a rifle and the only body found that was fully clothed. The others were shot by a pistol or strangled, he said. Asked if Sellars was a victim of the murder ring, the medical examiner said, “In my opinion he probably was not, but I can’t say for sure.” The testimony came in the fourth day of the trial of Elmer Wayne Henley, 18, accused in six of those deaths.
His trial was moved here from Houston. District Attorney Carol Vance said Thursday he hopes to wrap up the state’s case Friday. The defense has not said how many witnesses, if any, it plans to call Jachimczyk and Dr. Joseph Pruitt of Lufkin testified about how the bodies were identified. Under Texas law the state must prove not only that a defendant committed; a murder but must also show that the victim is the person named in the indictment. Pruitt, the Angelina County medical examiner, performed autopsies on four bodies found in a wooded area in East Texas after officers were led there by Henley. Pruitt testified one of the four, Homer Garcia, 15, was strangled by a plastic strap wrapped tightly around the neck.
Pruitt said he performed the autopsy in a shed behind a San Augustine funeral home and had no X-ray equipment to look for foreign objects in the body. A second autopsy was performed in Houston by Jachimczyk. Using X rays, he found two .22-caliber bullets in Garcia’s head and one in his chest. Henley is accused of slaying Garcia; Frank Antony Aguire, 18; Johnny Ray Delone, 16; Marty Ray Jones. 18; Charles C. Cobble, 17, and William Ray Lawrence, 15. Pruitt said he identified one of the murder victims as Lawrence, partly on the basis of comparing a photo of the partially decomposed face to a newspaper photo of Lawrence. Pruitt also said both Lawrence and the body had perfect teeth, a condition he said was very unusual in 15-year-olds. Jachimczyk told the jury the bodies of Dave Hilligiest, 13, and Gregory Malley Winkle, 16, were sent to Georgia for burial by mistake. The two boys were misidentified as Billy Gene Baulch Jr., 17, and his brother, Michael Anthony Baulch, 15, mostly on the basis of the identification by the father of the Baulch youths clothing found in the grave with their nude bodies.
