Trial begins for Kennedale man accused of killing family

By Melody McDonald

Little Jodi Hummel had curly blond hair, loved Barbie, and had recently learned to count and write to five.

And, like most kindergartners, she was excited about Christmas.

"Jodi told everyone at school that this was going to be the best Christmas ever," prosecutor Miles Brissette told jurors on Monday morning.

But Christmas didn't come for the child.

Late on Dec. 17, 2009, Brissette said, Jodi, her pregnant mother, Joy, and her grandfather, Clyde "Eddie" Bedford, were killed inside their Kennedale home, which was then set on fire.

Jodi's father, John "Johnny" Hummel, 35, is on trial this week in state District Judge Ruben Gonzalez's court. Hummel is accused of killing his family so he could be single again.

The capital murder indictment against him accuses Hummel of killing two victims -- Joy Hummel and Eddie Bedford -- "during the same criminal transaction." Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Hummel.

During his hourlong opening statement Monday morning, Brissette, who is trying the case with Bob Gill, told the jury that Hummel, a former U.S. Marine who worked as a security guard, was having an affair with a woman he had met at a convenience store. One night, after a rendezvous at her apartment, he returned home and slaughtered his sleeping family.

Brissette said that Hummel had been standing in the kitchen contemplating what to do when he decided to take a dull kitchen knife and slit his pregnant wife's throat.

"His wife wakes up and the fight is on," Brissette told the jury. "The fight is on for her life and the life of her fetus."

During the struggle, Brissette said, Hummel grabbed a nearby baseball bat and beat his wife on the back of her head. When that "wasn't good enough," Brissette said, Hummel used other weapons in his collection, including a large Samurai sword, a smaller sword and, finally, a medieval dagger, to kill her.

After his wife "was dead at his feet," Brissette said, Hummel went into his father-in-law's bedroom, where he "proceeded to destroy" Bedford's skull with the baseball bat. Afterward, Brissette said, Hummel went into his daughter's bedroom, where she was sleeping alone in her bed -- something she had only recently started doing because she was scared of monsters.

"He took the aluminum bat and killed her by smashing her head in, as well," Brissette said.

Afterward, Brissette said, Hummel placed a roll of toilet paper next to each of the bodies and set them on fire. Hummel then went to several Walmart stores to try to establish an alibi before retuning home several hours later to find emergency personnel fighting the blaze.

When Hummel returned, Brissette said, he calmly asked officers, "Did anyone make it out?"

Brissette said Hummel willingly went to the police station, where he made a statement and gave authorities his clothes and shoes and consent to search his house. Afterward, Hummel drove to work in Arlington, where he waited three hours for his paycheck.

"He never says, 'My house burned down and my family is dead,'" Brissette said. "He takes his check and that's the last anyone sees of John Hummel in the state of Texas.'"

Hummel drove to Oceanside, Calif., where he rented a hotel room for two nights, Brissette said. Later, he and another man went into Mexico and, on Dec. 20, Hummel was detained trying to re-enter the country in San Ysidro, Calif., without the proper paperwork. By this time, he was wanted in Texas and was turned over to authorities in San Diego until local officials arrived to interview him.

Brissette said Hummel later confessed to the killings and told detectives where he dumped his weapons, which were recovered in the trash bin outside an Arlington auto parts store.

"We know who did it, how he did it and why he did it," Brissette told the jury. "He wanted to be single.

"We have to bring evidence in here and it's going to be graphic evidence. The state is going to bring a forensic anthropologist who had to rebuild the skulls of Eddie and Joy -- she had to put them back together."

Defense perspective

In his brief opening statement, Hummel's defense attorney, Larry Moore, who is working with Fred Cummings and Pam Fernandez, agreed that the case was "graphic, disturbing and horrific."

But he told the jury to keep asking themselves what the evidence tells them about who committed the murders and why.

"You're not going to hear a reasonable, rational explanation for why they occurred," he said.

After opening statements, the jury heard a little bit about Jodi, who was described by her kindergarten teacher at James F. Delaney Elementary School in Kennedale as "sweet and shy." Audria Hastings testified that Jodi's class had learned their letters up to 'Y,' to count and write to five, and all about pumpkins, including one they had taken apart in class and named Olivia.

School nurse Connie Smith later told the jury that on Dec. 17, 2009 -- the last day of Jodi's life -- the child came to her office with a hurt lip after falling down on the playground.

"She was crying a bunch, and so we called her mom," Smith testified. "Her mom came to see her, which I thought was real nice. She said she was expecting another child and was very excited about it."

Melody McDonald,

817-390-7386

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