Second in a series
Re “Did Bilodeau Case Witness Tab the Wrong Man?”
Robert Conley, the public defender for Fire Station murder suspect Myron Grant, believes he has plausible answers for the main questions the prosecution will raise when the trial starts, perhaps in mid-September.
Believing that he knocked down witness contentions the other day about recognizing his client at the death scene 2½ years ago, Mr. Conley turned to the next big pillar for the prosecution, cell phone records.
“Obviously the state is putting great reliance on the telephone records,” the lawyer said.
The prosecution is expected to link several-times-offender Mr. Grant with a dozen calls to and from his cell phone — in the vicinity of the crime — before and after the mysteriously motivated murder of City Hall construction consultant Paul Bilodeau, Jan. 2, 2009.
The fatal shooting of the supervisor who was working late on a Friday night the day after a holiday, has been placed, unofficially, at about 7 o’clock.
“Even by the state’s own cvellphone records, my client could not have been at the scene very likely until about 6:40,” Mr. Conley said.
“Around 6:30 or 6:35, it seems fairly apparent that if he has his cellphone, (the signal) is pinging at the Ladera Center. That would be in the same general area of the (crime scene on Bristol Parkway, Fox Hills).
“That would make it possible for him to get over there, I suppose, park his car (next door to the Fire Station construction site), get out of his car and walk to the trailer by sometime nearing 7. That would be possible.
“Of course, we made the point anybody who goes to the Fox Hills Mall or the Marshall’s store nearby or the park just south of there…
“My client has a half-grandmother who lived due south of that cell phone tower, and that happens to be where one of (Mr. Grant’s) brothers, Timmy, lived. My client always was close to Timmy,” said Mr. Conley..
“If my client went to the grandmother of Timmy, whom he referred to as his own grandmother, he would be directly due south of that antenna, pinging off that aerial (at Corporate Pointe) that they are making their case on.
“Not only is my client clearly, apparently, at Ladera Center (at the confluence of La Cienega, Centinela and La Tijera), it looks as if he had been shopping around the center that afternoon.
“According to (the prosecution’s) cell phone records, that is where my client would have been around 6:30.”
But Mr. Conley contends that Mr. Grant, logically, rationally, could have been at numerous destinations in the varied neighborhood.
“Around 7:10, they are saying he is pinging off Corporate Pointe,” the attorney said. “The problem is, if someone is driving around that area to the Fox Hills Mall, at some point they will, at some point, ping off the Corporate Pointe aerial.
“There would be the same result if the person were going to the Marshall’s, to the park a little south of the construction trailer, or if he is going to his grandmother’s,” Mr. Conley concluded.
