This happened in 2010, but the trial was finally supposed to start tomorrow. (I looked but couldn't find a thread for it.) They have been dicking around for 3 years, first saying their client was "too depressed" to stand trial, then hinting their defense would be drugs (bath salts made him do it.) Then yesterday, out of the blue, he pleads guilty.
This genius killed her, then drove around in her car using her credit cards until he got caught, 2 days later. He had apparently been messaging several girls on FB trying to lure them into meeting up, but poor Cara was the only one who responded.
I knew she had been bludgeoned but the horrific details only came out today...
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
A Roanoke man Monday pleaded guilty and no contest to the brutal 2010 killing of Cara Marie Holley, bringing to a close a three-year case that could end with a death sentence.
Flanked by a small team of defense attorneys, Carey Shane Padgett, 24, stood before Judge James Swanson and answered to each of the 10 indictments read to him.
Padgett pleaded guilty to two counts of capital murder and to abduction and robbery. He pleaded no contest to three additional counts of capital murder and charges of abduction with the intent to defile, forcible sodomy and rape. By entering his pleas, Padgett avoided sitting through an 18-day jury trial that was scheduled to begin Wednesday morning.
After the hearing, defense attorney Neil Horn explained that Padgett made his decision without a plea agreement with prosecutors. "This is still a death case," Horn said, adding that a multi day sentencing hearing will likely take place sometime after the new year.
The 24-year-old faces three possible sentences: death, life in prison with a fine, or life in prison with no fine.
The charges against Padgett were long delayed because his depression had made him temporarily unfit to stand trial.
In Roanoke County Circuit Court, Padgett showed little emotion during the proceeding, sitting in a jail-issued jumpsuit, his hands placed calmly on his knees. He listened as, for nearly an hour, Roanoke County Commonwealth's Attorney Randy Leach meticulously unpacked a summary of the evidence the prosecution would have presented at trial.
According to Leach, the case began on a summer evening in the middle of a secluded Roanoke County field. Padgett would later tell detectives he and Holley spent about an hour there on July 7, smoking marijuana and chatting. They had been classmates at Roanoke's Patrick Henry High School. But when Holley explained she needed to leave for a dinner date, Padgett's demeanor changed.
And as Leach walked the court through the violent final moments of Holley's life, two people left the courtroom. Many of those who remained buried their eyes in their hands.
Leach said Padgett admitted to detectives that he began tussling with Holley in the car. They fell from the vehicle and he proceeded to choke her, then stuffed her into a sleeping bag, kicked her, and finally retrieved a tire iron from the car.
"Did you hit her?" a detective asked him during an interview. "Hit her? Her head was bashed. I bashed her," Padgett responded.
He was eventually caught in Franklin County, after the police traced that someone had tried to use Holley's debit card on three occasions. With the help of video surveillance footage at Walmart, detectives identified Padgett as their main suspect.
He would later lead detectives to the spot where he left her body, hidden under a pile of debris along a stretch of road used by loggers in Franklin County. Leach said that as officers began to remove pallets and lumber from the pile, they found a beach towel. "They pull back the blue towel and a sleeping bag to reveal Cara in the position she was found," he said.
Lifeless. Unclothed. One of her eyes missing. And a tire iron shoved so far down her throat it was behind her abdomen.
"He had planned this from a couple of days before," Leach said. "He told officers he killed her to get her car and go out of town."
During interviews with detectives, Padgett admitted he had issues with rage, and that a host of personal problems had him wanting to escape his life in Roanoke. He said he didn't bear any particular ill will toward Holley, telling detectives: "She didn't do anything. She was just the unfortunate one who got picked."
Leach said that if the case had gone to trial, he would have called several young women to testify, each one of Padgett's former classmates that had received an invitation by him to spend time together.
"This was not just Cara," Leach said. "She was the unfortunate one to have the compassion to meet him."