Feb 26, 2008 4:51 pm US/Mountain
Friend, Husband Testify In Love Triangle Trial
FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP/CBS4) ―
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Michelle Moore during the Shawna Nelson murder trial on Tuesday.
CBS
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Shawna Louise Nelson in court in on Feb. 21
CBS
The husband and the best friend of a Greeley woman who is charged with killing a romantic rival have agreed to testify against her.
Shawna Nelson is on trial in the 2007 shooting death of Heather Garraus. Nelson had a long affair with Garraus' husband.
Nelson's best friend, Michelle Moore, accepted a deal Tuesday that calls for her to testify and to plead guilty to being an accessory to a crime. In exchange, prosecutors dropped more serious charges. They say she helped plan the slaying.
Moore testified she and Nelson left nails on the murder victim's driveway and vandalized her car. But when Heather Garraus and her husband decided to patch up their marriage, Nelson was furious.
"She had said that she wanted to get rid of her," Moore testified. "She had said that she could just drive down to the credit union where she worked and she could just shoot her."
Moore said she thought it was just talk, even Nelson's comments the night before the murder.
"She just had to get rid of her," Moore said. "She had to do it. That she was in
Hell and she didn't want to live like this anymore."
Moore said that Nelson told her that if she got a phone call the next day saying she was taking a bath, then Moore would know she did it. The next day, there was a message on Moore's phone.
"The voicemail said that she was going to relax and just take a bath," Moore said.
Nelson's husband Ken, a former Weld County sheriff's investigator, agreed to testify after a judge said his words won't be used against him in an evidence-tampering case. He testified Tuesday that he thought someone was pulling a prank on him when he heard his wife's name broadcast over a scanner. He told the court he thought one of the other detectives was trying to be funny, but when he heard the name again, he rushed to go home and check on his children.
Witnesses said they saw Ken Nelson remove something from his wife's truck.
Early Tuesday, a forensic expert testified that in his professional opinion, a tire from the truck Nelson was driving after the murder was "highly probable" match with a tire impression left at the scene of the crime taken by police. Defense attorneys suggested that a rock stuck in the tire the expert used to make a match could have been picked-up by the tire after the murder.
(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
Live: Shawna Nelson Love Triangle Murder Trial
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