Jurors view interview video

By RALPH BARTHOLDT

Hagadone News Network

COEUR d’ALENE — Killing Coeur d’Alene Police Sgt. Greg Moore left Jonathan D. Renfro feeling disgusted, the 29-year-old told police in a recorded interview that was played for jurors Tuesday at Renfro’s murder trial.

And it wasn’t a methamphetamine high that caused Renfro to pull the trigger firing the shot that killed Moore two years ago, the defendant told investigators after his arrest, it was fear.

Before resting their case Tuesday, prosecutors called one witness and played for jurors the video of the defendant’s interview with detectives hours after his capture and arrest.

During the interview, Renfro, who faces a charge of first-degree murder and the death penalty for his role in Moore’s death May 5, 2015, told Det. Sgt. Ken Lallatin of the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office and two Idaho State Police investigators that he was on edge after Moore stopped him around 1:20 a.m. on a sidewalk in the Sunshine Meadows neighborhood.

His fear caused him to react when Moore put his hand on his sidearm, Renfro said, after the slaying, as he sat against a cinderblock wall wearing red-and-white-striped jail pajamas facing a camera in an interview room of the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office.

After stopping Renfro on the night of the shooting and calling Renfro’s identification information in to dispatchers, Moore stood in the street listening to a reply on his earpiece. Renfro waited nearby for dispatchers to tell Moore about his status as a parolee. Renfro’s hand was on the 9mm Glock firearm in a pocket of his jacket, which hung open.

After receiving Renfro’s status from dispatch, Moore, whose face was down as he listened, raised his head and put his hand on his sidearm, according to Renfro. That is when the defendant feinted to Moore’s left, lifted the gun and jacket flap and fired one round from his pocket into Moore’s face.

The bullet shattered the officer’s front teeth. Two pieces of the fragmented bullet struck Moore’s vertebrae, one of them severing an artery. The bullet’s brass jacket lodged in Moore’s nasal cavity and the officer fell dead in the street.

“You were thinking, ‘Oh crap, police. I’m on parole and have a gun in my pocket.’ Did that go through your mind?” a detective asked Renfro during the interview.

“Yes. it was going through my mind,” Renfro replied.

“At some point, you intended to do it,” a detective said.

“If my intention was to shoot him, I would have shot him before I gave him my ID,” Renfro replied, his voice garbled. “I didn’t think. I just did it.”

At one point in the interview a detective asks why he shot Moore.

“Fear,” Renfro replies.

Renfro was afraid Moore would find the gun? the detective asked.

“I knew he was going to find it,” Renfro said.

“You shot him in the face out of fear?”

“Yes.”

“Have you killed anyone before?”

“No.”

“So, this is the first time you ever killed anyone?”

“Yeah.”

“How does it feel?” Lallatin asked.

“Disgusting,” Renfro replied.

Detectives ask if the officer was rude or unpleasant. Did that play a part in the killing?

“He was actually a really nice man,” Renfro said.

In the video, Renfro’s face is unshaven, his black hair almost shorn. The two-hour interview was taken following the shooting, after 7 a.m., and Renfro looked haggard and tired after being awake all night, coming off a methamphetamine high, and the fear of being captured.

At one point in the video, detectives left Renfro alone for 15 minutes and returned with a water bottle for the suspect, who appeared to have fallen asleep, his forehead on the table, his arms bound. They find him snoring.

Deputy prosecutor David Robins asked Lallatin Tuesday if the defendant had ever, in the course of being interviewed, blamed methamphetamine on his actions the night Moore was killed.

“Absolutely not,” Lallatin replied.

Did he ever appear delusional or hallucinatory?

“No,” Lallatin said.

During his interview with police, Renfro initially blamed the shooting on another man he called Davis, a big, muscular man with an eagle and swastika tattoo on his head.

“An eagle with its wings folded and a swastika in its claws,” Renfro said.

Davis, a member of the Aryan Brotherhood pulled the trigger, Renfro told police, but the story changed many times over the two-hour interview.

Davis is from California, but living on a ranch near Liberty Lake, Renfro told police.

“Davis yelled orders to me,” Renfro said at one point.

And, when police asked how they might locate Davis to corroborate Renfro’s story, the defendant said, “I don’t get ahold of him; he gets ahold of you.”

When police asked Renfro where he hooked up with Davis after parking his older model Ford pickup truck in the Hayden Walmart parking lot, Renfro said not far away, near a dentist’s office.

After police explained that dozens of surveillance cameras line the route Renfro and Davis allegedly took while walking toward Sunshine Meadows, Renfro said he met Davis in a remote wooded area, maybe the old cemetery on Ramsey Road.

Renfro, often dropping his head, lamented about his wellbeing before the incident.

“I was doing good,” he said. “I do drywall,” he said, not burglaries.

“I have been working as a home caregiver.”

At the interview’s conclusion, the detectives thank Renfro for cooperating with the investigation.

“We appreciate it,” Lallatin said. “I think it’s important that you’re sharing with us.”

Renfro, his voice muffled, replies, “I’m trying to do the right thing, but I can’t do right.”

The trial resumes Tuesday at 9 a.m. at the old Kootenai County courthouse when the defense will start calling witnesses.