Deborah WilkinsSUMMERVILLE, Ga. -- The morning he died, William Robert Packer reached into his truck for his Colt .45. It wasn't there.
When he walked back inside at 2646 John Jones Road, his girlfriend stared at him.
"Where's my gun?" he asked.
"It's right here, m***********," Deborah Elaine Wilkins told him, aiming the pistol.
That, Wilkins told investigators days later, is when she began snapping the trigger, hitting Packer five times in the stomach, back and knee. Her bullets sliced Packer's liver, stomach, spleen. They cracked bones and ripped open arteries.
Eight months later, day two of Wilkins' trial in Chattooga County Superior Court concluded Friday evening. She faces up to life in prison on charges of malice murder, felony murder and aggravated assault.
Her trial resumes Monday morning at 9.
During Friday's testimonies, Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit District Attorney Herbert "Buzz" Franklin played a recording of a police interview with Wilkins from last June, publicly exposing Wilkins' version of events for the first time. Under her mother's carport off Georgia Highway 100, Wilkins told investigators that she killed Packer in self-defense.
"He's the most evil son of a b**** that's ever walked the face of the earth," she said.
She said Packer was drunk. She said he told her he was going to kill three people who he believed swindled him out of the 81 acres where he lived, the 81 acres he inherited from his parents.
Short on money, Wilkins said, Packer agreed in 2010 to sell some of the land to his friend, Calvin Brooks. But when he signed the proper papers, he was drunk. He later realized he sold the whole property -- for $114,000, court records show.
Albert Palmour, Packer's attorney, oversaw the whole deal.
So in the early morning hours of June 14, Wilkins said, Packer told his girlfriend he was going to kill three people: Brooks, Palmour and one of Palmour's employees. Then, realizing he had just revealed his whole plan, Packer told Wilkins he needed to kill her, too.
That's when he ran to his truck, looking for his weapon. But Wilkins said she knew the gun was in his room, so she grabbed it while he was gone. When he returned, she killed him.
"I took a monster down and I saved three lives," Wilkins said. "I'll go to my grave believing that."
But Georgia Bureau of Investigations Assistant Special Agent in Charge Joe Montgomery and Chattooga County Sheriff's Office Investigator Eddie Colbert question why she first tried to cover up the case. She didn't call 911 for about 12 more hours. And in the meantime, she tossed the gun in a pond behind her mother's home.
Wilkins said she was scared; she believed Packer was connected to powerful people who would kill her in retaliation. Even though she said her boyfriend plotted to kill Palmour, she told investigators that Palmour would be loyal to Packer.
She said Palmour had sway in Chattooga County because his father used to be law partners with prominent Summerville attorney Bobby Lee Cook.
"I'll get the death penalty if they have anything to do with it," she said.
While Wilkins ranted about Cook, the attorney's daughter, Judge Kristina Cook Graham, sat on the bench, eyes down, focused on the papers inches in front of her. Before the trial began, Public Defender David Dunn said he had no problem with Graham hearing the case, despite his client's apparent fear of her father.
During her interview last June, Wilkins also discussed the death of James "Pee Wee" Kirby, whom Packer killed on his front steps in October 2010. Packer claimed self-defense in that case, saying Kirby attacked him with a knife before Packer shot him.
In her interview, Wilkins said Packer had planned to kill Kirby for three weeks. Then, before the trial, his attorney ordered her to conceal that from the jury.
"He told me how he was going to do it, when he was going to do it," Wilkins said. "Albert Palmour talked me into going along with that."
Contact Staff Writer Tyler Jett at tjett@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6476.
From the future, March 4, 2015: