Fort Worth death penalty trial: Suspect slipped in past tense reference to victim
When they arrived in a pickup outside an abandoned rural bait shop, Clay Turrentine and Veronica Jones had already been shot.
During the drive from a Fort Worth used car dealership to desolate Palo Pinto County, they were conscious in the back seat. Knowing what was to come, both begged for their lives, a witness told investigators.
The pickup’s driver parked, and, one at a time, Lamont Cousins took Turrentine and Jones out of the truck, law enforcement authorities allege.
Cousins shot Turrentine, who owned the car sales business, across the jaw, then in the back of the head, according to prosecutors’ account.
He next shot Jones, also in the back of her skull, prosecutors allege. The .40 caliber round exited her forehead.
Earlier in the day, Cousins shot Jones’ aunt, Virginia Lewis, in the right temple, leaving the 65-year-old car dealership employee’s body on the floor behind a desk in the business’ office and napkins soaked in blood in a trash can in an adjacent room, prosecutors said.
Testimony in Cousins’ capital murder trial in the December 2020 triple homicide began on Tuesday in Criminal District Court No. 3 in Tarrant County.
The Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office is seeking the death penalty.
Cousins and Turrentine were business partners who bought and sold used cars. Turrentine ran Bill’s Auto Sales, in the 4200 block of Benbrook Highway.
The killings, prosecutors told the jury, were motivated by a bad business deal.
Cousins’ trial is first Tarrant death penalty case in 2025
It is the first death penalty case to go to trial in Tarrant County this year. In each of the three death penalty capital murder cases that went before a jury in the county last year, the juries returned the punishment verdict that the state sought.
The Cousins prosecution team of Dale Smith and Lloyd Whelchel is the same pairing of assistant district attorneys who last year won a death verdict for defendant Paige Lawyer, who strangled his girlfriend and her daughter after he raped the 10-year-old.
Judge Doug Allen, who is presiding at Cousins’ trial, was also on the bench during the most recent death penalty capital murder trial in Tarrant County. A jury in December found that Jason Thornburg, a serial killer of five people who ate a piece of the heart of one of the victims, should be put to death.
If the jury finds Cousins guilty of capital murder, the panel will in a second trial phase consider his punishment.
The jury will be instructed to consider life in prison without parole or death. Jurors will weigh whether the state proved beyond a reasonable doubt that it is probable that Cousins poses a continuing threat of criminal violence and whether there was mitigating evidence that the panel might regard as reducing Cousins’ moral blameworthiness and would warrant a sentence of life in prison without parole.
Man who drove defendant is a key witness
In the state’s opening statement, Whelchel told jurors that they would hear evidence that Cousins’ DNA was on the trigger of the gun that was used to shoot the victims.
The trial’s central witness will be Andrew Vandermeer, who prosecutors say drove Cousins, Turrentine and Jones to Palo Pinto County.
Prosecutor Whelchel told the jury that Vandermeer, who is also under indictment on capital murder in the case, would testify and planned to accept the state’s offer of 45 years in prison in exchange for his guilty plea.
Whelchel referred in his opening to the business deal argument that underpinned the killings but did not describe its details.
Turrentine had purchased a Dodge from Cousins and paid $10,000 for it, according to a police detective’s account in an arrest warrant affidavit. Turrentine bought the vehicle for Jones, who decided that she did not want it, and he put it on their lot to be sold. A buyer purchased the vehicle and later discovered that it had a lien on it and it was repossessed. Turrentine returned to the buyer the money he or she had paid for the vehicle, leaving Turrentine at a loss.
Defense attorneys Brian Salvant and Shawn Paschall were appointed to represent Cousins. In his opening statement, Paschall encouraged the jurors to keep an open mind.
Dr. Michael Chaump, a forensic pathologist who reviewed autopsy photos and a colleague’s report, but did not perform the exams himself, guided the jury through 33 autopsy photos as he explained the bullets’ path and damage and his conclusions that the deaths were caused by gunshot wounds and were homicides.
Defendant referred to victim in past tense, detective testifies
Cousins’ status as a possible suspect was strengthened by his inadvertent language missteps in his first interview with a Fort Worth Police Department Homicide Unit detective, the jury learned on Tuesday.
Detectives found Cousins and Vandermeer outside a wholesale car dealership in Arlington after tracking the GPS on a Ford F-150 recorded on surveillance video of the area outside of Bill’s Auto Sales.
Detective Tom O’Brien spoke with Cousins on Dec. 15, 2020, the day after Lewis’ body was found, but before it was certain that Turrentine and Jones were dead.
At the beginning of the interview, O’Brien told Cousins he was investigating a murder, but did not mention the victim’s name, according to an audio recording of the conversation that prosecutors played for the jury.
Cousins told O’Brien that he was at Turrentine’s office a day earlier. Cousins said Lewis was also there and that Turrentine gave him two checks for vehicles.
As they discussed in the detective’s car a timeline of Cousins’ activity the previous day and his relationships with people who worked at the Benbrook Highway dealership, Cousins had unexplained knowledge, Detective O’Brien testified.
Cousins said, “I had love for Clay,” and used another past tense reference to Turrentine.
“I didn’t know Clay was dead,” O’Brien testified on cross examination.
The tone of the interview shifted, and Detective O’Brien told Cousins that, if he was involved in the homicide, it was time to offer an explanation.
“I did not do [expletive],” Cousins said.
Testimony will resume on Monday.
This story was originally published April 16, 2025 at 6:03 PM.
