By james art CANTON — A former Sandy Creek Dollar General store manager testified Tuesday in the double-murder trial of Adam W. Smith and said Smith bought gift cards with $100 bills that had blood on them just hours after Ronald was killed E. “Huck” Durham.
Also Tuesday, an Oswegatchie woman took the stand to testify about finding Durham’s cell phone placed on the railing of a bridge in downtown Gouverneur four days after the murder. Rounding out the day was Durham’s daughter, Marilyn Durham, who spoke about her late father’s relationship with the defendant. She did not finish testifying before court adjourned for the day.
Smith, 48, is charged in a 14-count indictment in the murders of Durham, 72, on February 11, 2023, at East Riverside Cemetery, Gouverneur, and William M. “Bill” Freeman, 67, at Freeman’s home on March 1, 2023 in Rossi. Smith lived in the Gouverneur, Lake Placid and Rossie areas. He is being held without bond at the St. Lawrence County Correctional Facility in Canton and is being represented by attorney Brian P. Barrett of Lake Placid.
Patricia Lee was the first witness of the day. Questioned by Assistant District Attorney Matthew Peabody, she told jurors she worked an 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. shift at the Sandy Creek Dollar General as a store manager on Feb. 11, 2023. She was shown and confirmed video from a surveillance camera taken from the store that day, which shows Smith entering and leaving the store twice.
The first time he entered the store was around 1 p.m., when Smith bought an Apple Pay card and put $500 on it.
“He paid with $100 bills,” Lee testified. “When he handed me the bills, it looked like there was blood on them … a centimeter of them had a red spot,” she said from the witness stand. “He noticed I was surprised and said he had been painting that day. It didn’t look like paint to me.”
She said Smith then left the store and returned about five minutes later. This time he bought a Steam card and put $100 on it along with a USB cable to charge the phone. Steam is a platform for buying video games and movies online. Again, Lee testified, Smith paid with cash that appeared to have blood on it.
“He got to the cash register and paid with another $100 bill that had a red stain on it,” Lee said.
She said that while Smith was in the store the second time, “he was on the phone and he said on the phone that he didn’t care if the cops were called … other customers heard him as well.”
Lee told the jury that while in the store, Smith was “acting nervous.”
“He was very rude at first because I wasn’t on the register. All the customers seemed to be asking me what was up with him,” Lee said. “He said before he left he was apologizing. He said his uncle had just been killed and left.
She said she was concerned the bills were biohazardous because there was blood on them, so she put hand sanitizer on them. Surveillance video from the store showed her doing this.
“I took the $100 bills out of the drawer because I didn’t feel comfortable [that] it was paint and I was worried someone else would touch them,” Lee testified.
On cross-examination, Lee said she was not sure who Smith spoke to on the phone.
“It sounded like a woman. At one point I put it on speaker,” she said, but she doesn’t know what they talked about.
“How come you never called the police that day?” Barrett asked.
“There wasn’t much blood on him,” Lee replied. “I thought maybe he cut himself or something.”
She also said Smith got into a fight with another customer while at Dollar General.
“He had a conversation with a woman in the shop. She said her husband was a police officer and he was going to check,” Lee said.
“Do you know if she ever called the cops or anything?” Barrett asked, to which Lee replied, “No, I don’t.”
She added that she did not know if police ever found the bills or the bag that would have been used to deposit them at a local bank after the store closed for the day.
Later in the afternoon, Melissa Ryder of Oswegachee took the stand and was questioned by Peabody. She is not related to Debbie Ryder, who lives across the street from East Riverside Cemetery in Gouverneur.
She told jurors that on Feb. 15, 2023, her sister drove her to Gouverneur so she could visit friends. She testified that she was walking over the bridge on Main Street and found Durham’s cell phone there in a strange place.
“When I approached my friend’s apartment building, I had noticed a cell phone” sitting on the railing, facing up. She said the phone was “right before [the rail] cut to where it rests on the ground.
She said the phone was in good condition and wanted to return it to the owner without involving the police.
She said she tried to turn on the phone but the battery was completely dead. After a few minutes of trying to charge it with a car charger, it still wouldn’t start. Returning home to Oswegatchie later that evening, she said she charged the battery from 12% to 14% and was able to turn on the phone. She went into the photo gallery and noticed a picture of Durham. She recognized him from his recently published obituary.
She said she went into the contacts and found one labeled RJ. It turned out to be Durham’s son, Ronald Durham Jr.
Rider then uses his own phone to call that contact. She said there was no answer, but Durham Jr. returned her call. She said Durham told her to report the phone to state police, which she did. Officers visited her house around 1am, recovered the phone and kept it as evidence.
Ryder’s prior criminal record and history of substance abuse came up while she was on the stand. She said at the end of Peabody’s first round of questioning that she pleaded guilty in October 2017 to third-degree unlawful manufacture of methamphetamine.
Under cross-examination by Barrett, Ryder said she has been clean since the beginning of this year except for marijuana.
Barrett also asked her about part of her February 15, 2023 phone conversation with Ronald Durham Jr. Ryder testified that Durham Jr. asked if the phone was found near the Clearview Motel in Gouverneur, to which she said no and told him she found it on the bridge. Barrett then asked Ryder if she had ever been to Clearview. She said yes. Barrett then asked why, to which Peabody objected and Judge Gregory P. Storey seconded.
Barrett asked Ryder if she had ever dated Eric Fisher, the last person Durham was seen with before she died. She said yes, and Peabody objected again when Barrett asked what they were doing. The ADA asked the attorneys to approach the bench, saying, “I object to where I think this line of questioning is going.” Stori had jurors recess outside the courtroom while the attorneys resolved the issue. In a pretrial ruling, Storie declined for the defense to offer Fisher as a potential alternate suspect, saying there was no evidence to suggest he had any guilt.
“I don’t want to get into a situation where we’re trying to break the bell,” Peabody told the judge, adding that continuing to question Barrett would violate the preliminary ruling regarding Fisher.
Barrett claimed, “I’m basically asking the witness who found Mr. Durham’s cell phone about her relationship with the last person who was seen with Mr. Durham.”
After the jury returned, Barrett asked Ryder what she knew about Fisher and if she had ever done drugs with him. The prosecution objected to both questions and asked that they be stricken from the record.
“An unanswered question is not evidence … it is expunged from the record,” Storie said.
“No more questions,” Barrett said.
The final witness for Tuesday was Huck Durham’s daughter, Marilyn Durham, who gave emotional testimony and cried at times as she recalled her time with her father and the hours after learning of his death. She shared a house with her parents and still lives there in Gouverneur. Her mother, Sharon, died of cancer two years before her father was killed.
She said her father had a routine after her mother died. He would wake up at 3 or 4 a.m., go to Stewart’s and get coffee, then go to East Riverside Cemetery and sit with his window facing Sharon’s grave. Through tears, she remembered that sometimes she got up early enough to go with him to Stewart’s and to the cemetery.
She said her father often carried large amounts of cash and had between $8,000 and $16,000 in various places, including in his wallet, in money bags in his jacket pockets and in his pants pockets.
When Peabody asked why her father kept so much money, Durham replied, “It was something his father did, all my uncles. I guess it’s something they did.
Marilyn Durham said her father introduced her to Smith in July 2022. She said Smith and her father signed a contract written by Smith, with her as a witness, on October 18, 2022. The deal was for Smith to install new flooring in Durham home. In addition to Smith’s name, he identified himself in the handwritten contract as “Fresh Start Construction.” He demanded that Smith be paid half upfront and half upon completion.
“He put the floor in wrong and he didn’t finish it,” Durham testified Tuesday.
“He would show up some days, some days he wouldn’t,” she said. “He might work for a while, but mostly he hung out in the garage with my dad.”
She said her father would speak calmly to Smith about finishing the job.
“How was Mr. Smith?” Peabody asked.
“Angry,” Durham told the jury. “He called my dad names like asshole, bastard, he would call him stupid.”
On cross-examination, Durham spoke about her relationship with Frederick A. “Freddie” Wing Jr., a close friend of her father who was accused of his murder in front of Smith and later acquitted.
Marilyn Durham said she has a motherly relationship with Wing and they still spend time together. Her father had a paternal relationship with Wing and called him son.
Barrett asked Durham if Wing had a crush on her.
“He thinks of me as a mother,” Durham said.
“Is he in love with you?” Barrett asked, to which she replied, “No.”
During Barrett’s cross-examination of other witnesses earlier in the trial, when photographs of Durham’s truck at the scene of the murder were introduced into evidence, he asked several witnesses about scratches on the truck’s rear passenger door. On direct examination, Durham said the truck was scratched because before he died, her father was plowing their driveway and accidentally ran into a black trailer. She confirmed the trailer when she showed pictures of it.
She concluded her testimony Tuesday on cross-examination by saying she was shocked when Wing falsely admitted to killing her father.
The trial resumes at 1pm on Wednesday with more evidence from Marilyn Durham.