Sobbing could be heard among spectators this morning when two Kosciusko County Jail inmates testified that Christoval Dimas described to them last week how he and another man knocked Crystal Gayle Homister unconscious before raping her, shooting her, beheading her and setting her on fire.

Tears also flowed freely among more than a dozen of Homister's relatives Wednesday while slides of the crime scene and the skeletal remains were shown in court.

Some of the loved ones clung to each other for comfort or consolation while viewing the graphic depictions of the burned and decomposed skeleton. Homister's mother sobbed softly before leaving the courtroom.

Tony Young and Willie Phillips both testified today that Dimas told them he had a man named Raul pick Homister up from a party she was at and "brought her to him." The motive the inmates said Dimas gave for the murder was that she didn't want to have sex with both men. Both men testified separately that Dimas said Homister was knocked unconscious after she was struck in the head. Dimas and Raul, whose identity and last name have not been established, then raped Homister. The inmates said Homister was shot through the stomach to avoid the bullet striking a bone and then, Young said, "He said he had to cut the head clean off and set it next to the body and burned her." It was also told to the inmates, according to testimony, that the men went to a store to purchase a gallon of milk, poured out the milk and filled the jug with gasoline.

"He said he got a 90 percent chance of getting away with it," Phillips said.

On Wednesday, the woman who turned police attention to Dimas at the time the skeleton was found told jurors that Dimas told her and her roommate that he killed a girl. This morning's testimony included a jail officer who said Dimas made some unusual statements to her while he was housed at the Noble County Jail.

Testimony got under way two hours later than expected Wednesday because of inclement weather, but the rest of the day was filled with back-to-back testimony in Kosciusko Circuit Court in the trial of Dimas, 26, of Ligonier, who is accused of murdering the 22-year-old Homister of Elkhart. He also is being tried on a charge of abuse of a corpse.

Homister's burned remains - a partial skeleton - were found in April 2000 in a wooded area off CR 1050N on the east side of Lake Wawasee. Homister was reported missing Jan. 7, 2000, by family members. Dimas was indicted by a grand jury in the case in September 2000.

Dr. Stephen P. Nawrocki, a forensic anthropologist who led the recovery team at the scene, detailed what he found and offered slides to help jurors visualize the scene. The pictures included close-up views of the remains before, during and after the removal from the crime scene. He explained reasons for the appearance of the conditions of the bones - blackened areas and other discolorations from being burned, damage to bones from carnivores chewing on and/or dragging them away from the intact portion of the skeleton, insects feeding on some of the remaining soft tissue, bleaching from exposure to the sun and other weather changes.

Kosciusko County Chief Deputy Coroner John Sadler concurred with Nawrocki's findings and told the jury that any item in the crime scene area that was not flora or fauna was documented as possible evidence. All types of evidence was scattered, authorities said, by dogs and coyotes and, possibly, birds.

An estimated 85 percent to 90 percent of the skeleton was recovered. Some pieces, including four cervical vertabrae, were not located. Finding those bones would have helped in determining when Homister was decapitated, according to Dr. Scott Wagner.

Wagner is a pathologist, and he and a forensic pathologist performed the autopsy on Homister's remains and consulted with both Nawrocki and forensic odontologist Phil O'Shaughnessy, who has since died and whose transcribed deposition was read into the court record. O'Shaughnessy was the first expert to positively identify the skeletal remains as Homister's through the use of dental records.

Wagner said that, in addition to determining that Homister died as a result of blunt force trauma to the head after finding a fracture in the skull at the left temple, he located a fracture in the right shoulder blade.

As for the head injury, Wagner said, a dark coloring in the fracture indicates it occurred peri-mortem - or right about the time of death. A blunt force trauma is an injury in which a person is struck with any type of hard object, including a hand, Sadler said.

Wagner said the vertabrae injury would be "a pretty severe injury ... it would take a huge amount of trauma to create this." How Homister was decapitated cannot be determined without the missing vertebrae, Wagner said. "We can't see what's not there," he said. "We can only talk about what's there."

Also missing was a majority of the hands and feet, which were very burned, Nawrocki said, as well as the right arm and the left shoulder.

At the conclusion of the experts' testing and analyses, the manner of Homister's death was ruled homicide.

Dana Kreger, who co-hosted a cookout in February 2000, testified Dimas and his girlfriend, Stacey Wieand, attended the event, where Kreger said Dimas "talked crap." She said she didn't like how he talked in gangster slang and she went inside because she didn't want to socialize with him because of the things he was saying.

After turning down an offer to sell them drugs, Kreger said, Dimas said, "Don't narc me out cause it's real easy to get away with murder in Indiana." She said she told those present that "he's done it before and could do it again." She later testified: "We didn't think nothin' of it ... It was just one of those things that you put in the back of your mind."

Kreger said the comment returned to her memory a couple weeks later when she was in a van with her roommate and Wieand at a gas station and Dimas approached the vehicle and threatened to kill Wieand. A few weeks after that incident, Kreger said, Wieand came to their residence "and basically came over and told us everything." When the skeleton was discovered, Kreger said, it was Wieand who told them who it was. "It was just the other girl," Kreger said. "There was no name. Stacey's the one that said the name."

Defense attorney Michael Miner objected to inclusion of this morning's testimony from Crystal Everage, a jail officer with the Noble County Sheriff's Department. Everage testified Dimas showed her a photocopy of a photograph that showed a skeleton in a grassy area and told her it was Homister. She said he also told her he likes to watch autopsy videos and that he would like to do an autopsy on a live person with their nerves still intact so they could feel everything and then "he'd rip their eyeballs out while they're still alive and lick the blood off of them."

Two other NCJ officers testified this morning that attempts to move Dimas from one cell block to another were hampered when he said he couldn't be place where they wanted to put him "because someone who was related to the girl he killed was in there."

Jurors also heard testimony Wednesday from Damon Lettich, an Indiana State Police laboratory forensic scientist, who analyzed soil samples and the residue in a plastic milk jug found at the scene. Lettich said both gasoline and a heavy petroleum, such as diesel fuel or kerosene, were present in the samples. Prior testimony indicated Dimas told people he used gasoline and kerosene to burn Homister's body. Nawrocki also noted in his report the smell of an accelerant in the soil samples he collected.

Videotaped depositions recorded Tuesday, when jurors didn't report because of snowy road conditions, were shown from Karen Berka Brewer, a forensic serologist, and Mary Reed, a DNA analyst, both employed by the ISP. Both women, deemed experts in their fields, conducted tests on evidence from the crime scene.

Other depositions previously tape-recorded were transcribed and read into the court record, including testimony of Dr. David Baer, Homister's Millersburg dentist who provided premortem dental X-rays, and of Dr. John Meier, the Columbia City dentist who conducted an evaluation of the pre- and post-mortem dental X-rays after O'Shaughnessy's death. A 100 percent identification was made through dental records - 32 consistencies were found in the 32 teeth intact in the skull.

Also this morning, a Syracuse volunteer firefighter said he saw a black pickup pulling out of the lane where the skeleton was found. Larry Weaver Jr. said that event occurred sometime after the Christmas holiday in 1999, but before Valentine's Day 2000. He said the truck caught his attention because he is a service technician for that brand of vehicle and thought it might be one of his customers. He also saw smoke rising in the area from which the truck exited. Both Young and Phillips also testified Dimas told them he was in a black pickup the night of the murder.

Kosciusko County Prosecutor Charles Waggoner will continue presenting evidence through today and the trial is now expected to last at least through Monday. The trial was scheduled for five days, but more than a day has been lost because of a winter storm. [[In-content Ad]]