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Defense: Suspected sex abuse sent murder suspect 'through the roof'
By Matt Bean
(Court TV) -- A man charged with executing his son-in-law sobbed Tuesday as his lawyer told jurors how he found a series of pornographic pictures of his grandson on the victim's digital camera. "The fourth picture sent him through the roof," said defense lawyer Amber St. Clair. "The fourth picture was a picture of [then-4-year-old] Blaine naked, standing next to a man... and the man, [shown] only from the torso down, had an erect penis." The shocking claim came as St. Clair laid the foundation for her client's defense: that Bobby White killed his son-in-law, Aaron Ruboyianes, in a Kansas Wal-Mart on March 27, 2002, to prevent him from abusing his grandson. White, 50, had cared for the child since birth, but lost custody of the boy, now 5, to his daughter, Belinda, and Ruboyianes, only days before the shooting. He faces 25 years to life in prison if jurors determine the shooting in the electronics section where Ruboyianes worked was premeditated and that White intended to kill the 24-year-old. The bid to blame the shooting on White's rage was countered by prosecutor Jan Satterfield, who urged jurors to look at the facts in the case. "The evidence will establish in this case that the defendant had plenty of time to think about what he was going to do, that he deliberated, and that he formed the attempt to kill Aaron Ruboyianes," Satterfield said in her opening statement. Satterfield told jurors that White hadn't been to work at all the week leading up to the shooting. On the day before the shooting, in an apparent practice run, Satterfield told jurors, White drove to a town just shy of Augusta, where his daughter, Belinda, and Ruboyianes (whom she married in 1998) worked at the local Wal-Mart. He purchased a Dr. Pepper at a gas station before filling his tank and returning home. On March 27, he made it all the way. At about 7 a.m., he left his wife at home and set off in his 1999 Ford Ranger, a six-shooter and a box of .38 caliber ammunition in tow. A 130 miles away, his daughter and son-in-law were getting ready for work. Sometime before 9 a.m., Satterfield said, White fired three shots into Ruboyianes. The first pierced the victim's stomach below the belly button and exited through his buttocks, she told jurors. The second pierced his Aorta. And the third he fired into his skull. "He fired three times because he wanted to make sure Aaron was dead," Satterfield said. The prosecutor said she would call four witnesses in her case who saw White firing at a helpless Ruboyianes. "His intent, ladies and gentlemen, was to kill." On Tuesday morning, Judge Michael Ward decided to allow the jury to hear evidence that Aaron Ruboyianes allegedly abused the child. The state had argued in a pretrial motion that such evidence, which figures to be a cornerstone of White's defense, was uncorroborated. St. Clair, the defense lawyer, explained White's account of the day he claims he discovered the suspicious photos of his grandson. According to the lawyer, it was sometime around November 2001 that Ruboyianes lost the software for a new digital camera he had purchased. White had the same model, and agreed to come over to help set up the desktop interface. That's when she claimed her client found the photos, confronted his son-in-law, and chased him into the bathroom screaming, "you son of a bitch, you're going to go to jail." The abuse allegations didn't end there, however. St. Clair also sketched out in sympathetic tones White's family history. She told jurors how White took charge of Belinda's son when she wasn't able to care for him five years ago, and how White battled his daughter and her new husband, Ruboyianes, for custody in the courts shortly before the killing. Even before discovering the photos, St. Clair said, her client was worried about the child's allergies, and that Ruboyianes was giving him "wedgies," a playground prank in which one person yanks the underwear of another person from the back belt area. On March 25, a Sumner County judge presided over a hearing pitting White and his wife against his daughter, Ruboyianes and his parents. At the hearing, White's guardianship of the child was dismissed. According to the prosecutor, this was the fuel -- not the discovery of the photographs -- for White's outrage. "Belinda and Aaron had started something that the defendant was going to finish," said Satterfield. "And he finished it on March 27." St. Clair, too, offered White's compassion for his grandson as motivation, but argued that his rage rendered him blind on the day of the shooting. "He stepped over the edge," said St. Clair. "All he remembers that day is getting ready for work. He remembers little snippets of things, it's kind of like a dream." The state's first witness, Wal-Mart district manager Diedera Alexander, told the court she was 15 feet outside of the electronics department that morning when she heard a loud bang. "I saw someone standing over Aaron, the victim, with a gun and as I was standing there, I watched him shoot him two more times," she said. "I saw [Aaron] grab his stomach and turn around and fall down on the ground. "He said 'Oh my God,' and then he started moaning." Alexander, who testified she headed with another employee to the back of the store, said she didn't hear any argument between the men before the shooting. Whether White pulled his gun after a scuffle or simply walked up to his son-in-law and pulled the trigger could play heavily on the jury's decision on whether the crime was premeditated. On cross-examination, Alexander admitted that she might have been too far from the site of the eventual shooting to hear an argument if it had taken place. Three other witnesses to the actual shooting testified Tuesday, including customer Allan Sudduth, whose scratchy 911 call was played for the jury. Sudduth testified he first heard a loud bang and thought a high-pressure light bulb had exploded. But he quickly learned what had happened. "I didn't know what was going on until I saw the hair ruffle on the guy's head from the muzzle blast," testified Sudduth, describing White's final, point-blank blast. Kevin Grizzle, a district loss prevention supervisor with Wal-Mart, didn't see the shooting up close, but narrated a series of security tapes which showed White calmly entering the store around 9 a.m. He leaves about a minute later, still calm, but his movements are set off from the frantic and desperate employees that can be seen scrambling about the store in other sections of the quartered screen. The jury includes a team of eight men and four women.
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