Brock and Davina Husted
Joshua Graham Packer
Details of Husted killings revealed in search warrant documents
The armed intruder demanded cash and jewelry when he burst into the Husted home in Faria Beach the night of May 20, 2009.
Davina and Brock Husted’s 9-year-old son told sheriff’s detectives he helped his parents get cash for the man wearing the black motorcycle helmet. The boy later also got his mother’s purse to give to the intruder in hopes to get him to go away.
But by then the man had grabbed a knife from a kitchen butcher block and was stabbing the Husteds in a back bedroom while their son hid behind the living room couch.
The man then fled the same way he came into the house, via the beach, not harming the boy and his sleeping 11-year-old sister. The parents had urged him not to hurt the children and he had agreed, the son told detectives.
Details surrounding the slayings of Brock and Davina Husted and their unborn child were in affidavits in support of search warrants that were unsealed last week by Judge Bruce Young.
Joshua Graham Packer, 20, was arrested in April after his DNA was linked to the Husted killings.
Packer was indicted July 22 on three counts of first-degree murder along with two counts of first-degree robbery and one count of first-degree burglary. Packer is charged with three special allegations of using a knife to commit the three murders. Also, Packer was indicted for three counts of using a firearm to commit the robberies and the burglary.
He is charged with three special allegations which make him eligible for the death penalty, said Chief Deputy District Attorney Michael Frawley. “By late October we are planning on having a decision,” Frawley said Thursday.
Frawley has said there are no other suspects.
Sources have told The Star that DNA was found on the visor of a motorcycle helmet found under Brock Husted’s body. DNA was also found under Brock’s fingernails, the source said.
Packer’s DNA was collected following his January arrest on suspicion of a Santa Barbara gas station robbery under a new California law that allows collection of DNA samples in all felony arrests.
Judge Edward Brodie set the trial for March 1 with pre-trial motions set to begin on Feb. 1.
There were 18 search warrants served after the stabbings. Detectives served searched warrants to collect evidence like telephone records, blood stains, fingerprints, DNA, clothing, human hairs, fibers, documents and clothing.
In the affidavit to support the search warrants, detectives said the Husteds’ son told them he was sitting on the couch watching the news after he and his parents had just finished watching the season finale of “American Idol” TV show. Detectives said the show ended about 10:15 p.m.
The suspect came into the home from the beach and demanded money and jewelry, and Davina Husted told her son to get her wallet from her purse and take the cash out of the wallet, according to the affidavit. The boy got his father’s wallet and gave it to the suspect along with the cash from his mother’s wallet, court records show.
“(He) did as he was told and placed Davina’s cash and Brock Sr.’s wallet on the floor near the suspect,” the affidavit states, adding that the suspect picked up the money and Brock’s wallet.
His parents made the suspect promise not to hurt their children, and he promised he wouldn’t. The boy said he saw his father “run hurriedly” down the hallway toward their bedroom with his mother running behind him and the intruder following them.
The boy told his aunt that he thought he could defuse the situation by bringing his mother’s purse and offering it to the suspect, which he began to do, according to the court affidavit.
“(The boy) told her as he was walking toward the master bedroom, he heard Davina scream and dropped her purse and hid again,” the aunt told a detective, according to an affidavit.
There was a purse on the kitchen floor of the beach house that appeared to have been knocked off the counter, a homicide sergeant stated in a court document.
After the intruder left the house, the boy went to the bedroom where he saw his parents’ bodies. He then woke up his sister from her bedroom and told her what had happened.
After both children checked on their parents, they locked themselves into their parents’ room and then climbed out a bathroom window and ran to a neighbor’s house.
The boy who gave a detailed description of the suspect’s clothing and said the suspect was a “dark-skinned African American with blue eyes and a deep voice.”
Packer is white.
“ He noticed the suspect’s eye color when the suspect looked directly at him,” according to court documents.
http://www.vcstar.com/news/2010/sep/02/details-of-husted-murders-revealed-in-search/?partner=yahoo_feeds#ixzz0yQOcuDGy
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