Angela Hill’s case may have been resolved with her plea deal Monday but no mention of the attempted murder charge in her guilty pleas may indicate that it will be her partner in crime, Logan McFarland, who will now face that charge in addition to the dozen or so felonies now awaiting trial. (Plea deal published page 2)
Hill pled guilty to robbery, burglary and kidnapping Monday in Elko District Court, all felonies, stemming from a bi-state violent and deadly crime spree the Utah Bonnie and Clyde committed over the 2012 New Years weekend.
McFarland and Hill are accused of committing or being involved a host of other crimes over the 2012 New Year Holiday including the double murder of an elderly Mt. Pleasant couple Woody and Ann Fullwood and the attempted killing of Wendover gym owner Rattana Keomanivong.
While it was Hill and not McFarland who was charged with the attempted murder of Keomanivong in jail house interviews Hill placed almost all of the blame for the shooting and the other crimes squarely on the shoulders of her accomplice Logan McFarland and claimed she was another victim.
And according to sources very close to the case the Elko DA’s office is considering added the attempted murder charge to McFarland’s case.
This ‘good girl in bad company’ defense was aided during the preliminary hearing by the testimony of Keomanivong who failed to remember certain parts of her statement to police at the time of the shooting.
Shot in the head the former Wendover gym owner still suffers from memory loss and other brain damage from her almost fatal wound. Since the shooting she has had to relocate to Las Vegas where she is receiving physical and mental therapy.
In addition to the weak testimony from the victim, Hill’s public defender Fred Lee was also able to cast considerable doubt that the bullet that entered Keomanivong brain was actually fired from Hill’s gun.
While far from conclusively ruling Hill out as the shooter the ballistic tests coupled with the weak testimony from Keomanivong may have forced the Elko DA’s office to reconsider the charge against the Utah woman. And while there is nothing in Hill’s plea agreement that compels her to testify against McFarland there is also nothing that prevents her either.
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Indeed according to Hill’s mother, she has already provided San Pete prosecutors a wealth of information against McFarland in the double murder of the Fullwoods.
In a long, often hostile interview with the High Desert Advocate earlier this year, Abigail Atwood said that her daughter would very soon be transferred to Utah where she would testify against Robert McFarland.
Hills’ efforts to ‘cop a plea’ at the expense of McFarland are not new and in fact date to the minute the couple were arrested after they straggled out of the Pequop Mountains after hiding in the Nevada outback for three days.
According to law enforcement officers present at the time of their arrest, as soon as she was separated from her partner, she accused him of putting her under an almost total mind control. A defense her mother still believes.
“The only reason she went with him to Nevada was because he showed her pictures of our house and threatened her family.” Atwood said. “She never was in any trouble before this and the San Pete police now say she had nothing to do with the murder of the Fullwoods.”
That was not completely true according to San Pete Messenger newspaper publisher Suzanne Dean.
“The police did issue a clarification that the no longer believed that she waited in the car outside the Fullwood home while Robert McFarland killed them,” The publisher said. “Instead she left him off returned to where they were all staying and later picked him up several hours after the crime. She is still a definite person of interest in the crime.”
McFarland did not blame the crime spree on Hill however, but rather the Illuminati.
The odds that a member of that mythical world controlling organization testifying for McFarland are however much less that Hill testifying against him either in Nevada or Utah.
Hill’s testimony against McFarland as well as the ballistic evidence could be enough for a jury to convict McFarland of attempted murder and for the Elko county District Attorney’s office might tie up a very loose end.
As the charges stand now, while Rattana Keomanivong was shot no one is charged with the shooting.
Law enforcement have long hailed Keomanivong as a hero in the case. The owner of the local gym Animal House, Keomanivong won the Wendover Strongest woman contest the summer before.
As soon as the odds evened with only Hill and Keomanivong in the car, Keomanivong attacked her car jacker by “biting her ear, neck and forcing her from the vehicle,”. Hill fired a shot at the woman as she drove away, according to the police report.
Keomanivong was struck in the back of the head, but she was able to drive herself to the police station and give police a description of the two before she was airlifted to Salt Lake for emergency surgery.
“They had already established a pattern of attacking helpless people, robbing them, stealing their vehicles and killing them before anyone knew what was happening” said one detective. “If not for Mrs. Keomanivong they could have been well on their way to Reno or San Francisco with a trail of dead bodies behind them.”
Despite the accolades, Keomanivong must now live with injuries for the rest of her life. Early hope that she would completely recover have faded. A recent brain scan suggests that some of the damage may be permanent or take a very long time to heal.
