As expected Angela Hill blamed a bi-state two year old crime spree all on Logan McFarland that left a Utah couple dead and a Wendover woman critically injured but only after first making sure she would not be asked any question dealing with the double murder.
Testifying in the McFarland’s trial this week Hill first invoked her 5th amendment right against self incrimination and proceeded only after the prosecution agreed not to ask her questions regarding the either the Wendover shooting or the murder of the elderly Utah couple.
Hill pled guilty to robbery, burglary and kidnapping in December 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 and now in her ex-lovers trial, 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.
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. 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.
Hill’s 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.”
Hill’s blame of McFarland also did not impress Elko District Judge Nancy Porter when Hill was sentenced. Porter threw out a relatively lenient sentencing recommendation and sentenced to 30 years in prison
McFarland did not blame the crime spree on Hill however, but rather the Illuminati.
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.
“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.
