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SALT LAKE CITY — A man implicated in a 10-year-old death was known to talk about what he had allegedly done and his willingness to do it again.
"David McNeill was saying he had beaten somebody and threw him over a balcony and if anybody said anything, it could happen to them," Lexy Whimpey testified Wednesday.
McNeill was saying he had beaten somebody and threw him over a balcony and if anybody said anything, it could happen to them.
–Lexy Whimpey
Whimpey was one of four witnesses who testified in 3rd District Court at a preliminary hearing for McNeill, 41, who has been charged with murder, a first-degree felony, in connection with the 2000 death of Chesney Hansen, 26. Judge Robert Faust ordered McNeill to stand trial on the charge.
Hansen's body was found 22 feet below a balcony at the Homewood Suites, 1220 E. 2100 South, on Jan. 8, 2000. McNeill had been in the room with the man and initially told police Hansen had tried to hang himself, but then admitted the pair got into a fight.
His attorney, Rudy Bautista, is adamant that McNeill will acknowledge that he believed Hansen had stolen $6 from him and that he became angry and began beating Hansen. He also told police he twice strangled Hansen with a belt. But McNeill says it never went beyond that.
"Always, McNeill stops short of killing (Hansen), throwing (Hansen)," Bautista said outside of court. "When he left, Chesney was alive, acting crazy and (McNeill) wanted to get the heck out of there."
McNeill later told police he didn't know what had come over him, according to Salt Lake police detective Coudy Lougy, who interviewed the man.
"It was almost like demons had taken over his body was how he explained it," Lougy testified. "He said he normally wouldn't freak out over $6."
But multiple witnesses said McNeill was a known drug dealer who didn't like to be challenged.
"He told me he'd gotten away with it once and would do it again," Dennis Hobot, a former roommate, said in court, noting that he didn't really know what McNeill was talking about.
"(Later) he told me he'd gotten into a fight with this guy, pushed him off a balcony and they thought it was suicide."
He said he thought McNeill was simply bragging and "just trying to be a big drug dealer." Later, though, Hobot said other people said McNeill had told them a similar story.
"David always tried to intimidate," he said.
McNeill told a similar story to David Johnson — a former fellow inmate at the Utah State Prison — soon after his arrest in 2010. Johnson, said McNeill, seemed like a happy, friendly, "down-to-earth" guy, prompting him to ask why he would do such a thing.
"He said: 'He ripped me off,'" Johnson recalled.
Bautista questioned Lougy as to whether other people had been interviewed in connection with Hansen's death, including two other men who checked in with McNeill and Hansen who were staying in a room on a different floor. Lougy said they had interviewed others, including a man who apparently confessed to his brother that he had "clotheslined" Hansen, or hit him on the neck with his arm, causing Hansen to flip over the railing.
Lougy also confirmed that McNeill had told him that Hansen was "saying weird things" and was talking about flying when he left the hotel room. A toxicology report later showed that Hansen had high levels of methamphetamine is his system in addition to anti-anxiety medicines and cocaine.
McNeill's clothing, shoes and birth certificate were found in the hotel room. He said he fled to Wendover after the incident. He was interviewed in 2000, but wasn't charged until April 2010. He is currently in custody in connection with a probation violation stemming from a separate charge.
Neither detectives nor prosecutors knew why there were no arrests until 10 years after Hansen's death. Prosecutor Bernadette Gomez said charges had never been screened in the case.
McNeill's next court appearance is scheduled for April 22.
E-mail:emorgan@ksl.com
