Published: February 14, 2007 09:06 pm

Mom: ‘My son didn’t do it’

By BEN FIELDS — The Independent

CATLETTSBURG — The mother of a man on trial for murder says her son didn’t do it.

Linda Simpson, the mother of 24-year-old Timothy Scott Simpson, took the stand Wednesday in her son’s defense.

Linda Simpson was the one who called 911 on the morning of Feb. 16, 2006, when Faith Clay was found dead in Timothy Simpson’s apartment.

In the frantic call, she claims “My son’s girlfriend had a gun and shot herself.”

Wednesday, Linda Simpson maintained her belief that the death was a suicide, saying Clay, 28, was frequently depressed and often made statements that she didn’t see the point in continuing to live.

Police and prosecutors, on the other hand, believe Simpson shot Clay with his 9 mm pistol, which was modified with a homemade silencer, consisting of a two-liter Mountain Dew bottle duct-taped to the weapon.

Clay was shot in the right eye, and the bullet went through her brain and exited the left side of the back of her skull, killing her more or less immediately, according to testimony from medical experts.

Those same experts have also testified for the prosecution that Clay couldn’t have manipulated a firearm fitted with a two-liter bottle because of the high amounts of methadone and Xanax in her system at the time. They also said suicides by gunshot to the eye are extremely rare.

But Linda Simpson said Wednesday “I know my son didn’t do it.”

She said Clay, whom she had known for about a month before the shooting, frequently talked about her sadness over having her children taken away because of her drug problem, and said Clay didn’t see the use of pulling her life together.

“One day she’d say she wanted to get off the drugs, and the next she’d say there wasn’t any use,” Linda Simpson said. “About a week prior to her death, she told me she had no purpose, no reason for going on, and she wished she could just die.”

She said she believed Clay was a “lonely and disturbed person.

“She said there was no joy in living,” Linda Simpson said. “She said she was ugly and couldn’t hold a job.”

Linda Simpson said she twice took Clay to a methadone clinic in Huntington for treatment, and also paid for eye medication for Clay’s infected right eye.

At one point, Linda Simpson broke down in tears, saying she blamed herself for Clay’s death, because she had told Clay she needed to move out from her son’s garage apartment, adjacent to her own house, the day before the shooting.

“I had told her to leave, and she had no place to go,” she said.

Linda Simpson admitted to moving the gun along with her son when they found the body, but, upon cross-examination, Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Scott Reese revealed that her testimony of what happened at the scene was inconsistent with her own statement taken the day of the shooting, and the statement her son gave to police.

The mother testified Wednesday that Timothy Simpson picked up the gun from the floor, and she told him not to touch it, took it from him by the barrel and placed it in a nearby chair.

In her statement the day of the incident, Linda Simpson claimed she picked the gun up by the barrel with a tissue and put it in the chair. Timothy Simpson told police in a videotaped statement he had already removed the gun from the scene, and his mother asked him where it was, and he retrieved it, saying he put in the chair because that’s where his mother wanted him to put it.

Linda Simpson blamed this and other inconsistencies — like the part of her statement saying her son woke her up at 4 a.m., a full hour before the police were called — on the fact that she was distraught and upset the day of the shooting.

She also said that her son’s statement to police that he pounded on her door anywhere from 90 to 15 minutes before she answered was also untrue.

In cross-examination, Reese focused on Clay buying new clothes and makeup and packing the night before the shooting, and also pointed out that Clay had given Linda Simpson a card thanking her for all of her help and support that day, as evidence that the woman was getting ready to move, not kill herself.

The defense called other witnesses to attest to Clay making statements about committing suicide.

One, Bessie Daniels, of Ashland, said she and Clay were “lifelong friends,” and said Clay was always depressed and often talked of suicide, even attempting it once sometime around 1999 or 2000.

However, on cross examination, Daniels couldn’t come up with Clay’s last name, didn’t know if the police were ever called in the alleged suicide attempt and gave the wrong number of children the woman had at that period in time.

A friend of the Simpson family, Judy Anderson, testified she was at Simpson’s apartment frequently in the months leading up to Clay’s death, because she was using his computer.

She said Clay told her “If I had a gun I would blow my brains out,” and said the woman mentioned suicide on several occasions, adding that she tried to distance herself from the conversations with Clay.

She also claimed to be at Timothy Simpson’s apartment the night before the shooting, staying until midnight, but Timothy Simpson said in his video statement that he and Clay were alone at the apartment that night.

Closing arguments are scheduled for this morning.

If convicted of murder, Timothy Simpson faces 20 years to life in prison. He is also facing a charge of tampering with evidence, which carries a maximum sentence of five years.