Witnesses all describe similar car near scene
By RYAN CHRISTNER
OSBORNE -- Those who last saw Jeffery Scott Noel alive or were near his home around what is believed to have been the time of his murder were some of the witnesses who spoke Friday in Osborne County District Court during the trial of 45-year-old Salina resident Kenneth Eugene Wilson, who is charged in the March 2008 killing.
On Wednesday, Noel's wife told the court that on the morning of March 25, 2008, her husband left home around 7 a.m. to perform his daily duties around the family farm and typically returned for lunch around noon.
Rick Warneking, a rural Osborne County mail carrier, said Friday he did not notice anything out of the ordinary or see any vehicles, familiar or otherwise, at the time he dropped off the family's mail at 11 a.m. that day, nor when he passed the residence five or 10 minutes later.
There also were no vehicles around 11:30 a.m., said Gary Davis, a Portis farmer who owns and works land just south of the Noel home. However, Davis said he remembered seeing Scott Noel's pickup parked outside the house sometime after he returned from lunch at 1 p.m.
Marty Wolters, another area farmer, later said he saw Noel twice that morning -- once around 11:45 a.m. and again approximately 10 minutes later -- as the men were traveling back and forth on a county road.
Those two times closely correspond to the times when another vehicle was observed driving on West 20th Drive, which runs past the Noel's rural home.
Bradley Davis, son of Gary Davis, testified he was driving on that stretch of road at around 11:45 a.m. when an unfamiliar vehicle pulled out of the Noel's driveway in front of him.
As he followed the car to where the road intersects U.S. Highway 281, a quarter of a mile away, Davis said he got a "fairly good look" at the car, which he described as a gray or bluish-gray "older" sedan with a trunk that was partially open.
"I'd never seen it before," he said. "It looked like an odd vehicle to have been there."
The vehicle had only one occupant, Davis said, a white male with dark hair and skin who was wearing a ball cap.
Brad Roadhouse, the branch manager of the Portis cooperative, also said he saw a vehicle matching that description that day.
At around 11:50 a.m., Roadhouse said, he was driving south of U.S. 281 when he saw a gray or bluish-gray mid-1980s sedan heading east on West 20th, in the direction of the Noel home. The car's trunk appeared to be ajar, he said, and was bouncing slightly.
On Thursday, Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent Kelly Schneider told jurors about a series of surveillance missions outside Wilson's Salina home, during which officers collected evidence from his trash.
One of the items taken in this way, he said, was a letter from the Missouri State Highway Patrol informing Wilson of their towing and storage of "your tan 1987 Pontiac Bonneville" from the side of a highway in May 2008.
More accurately, Schneider said and demonstrated in photos, the vehicle was bluish-gray in color and had a damaged trunk that stuck up slightly at one side.
The car, a Missouri trooper testified, had been abandoned on the roadway since at least April 4, 2008.
Salinan Lissa Robles-Luna, also on Thursday, said she sold the car to Wilson in mid-March 2008.
Later on Friday, KBI special agent Delbert Hawel, the lead investigator in the Noel murder, told of how Wilson was identified by a Bazine resident after she had encountered a suspicious person at her rural home on March 13.
Loa Hagelgantz on Wednesday testified about seeing a "squarish" blue or gray car with a Kansas tag and "SA," or Saline County, designation drive out from the back of her property as she returned home.
The driver, who was the only occupant of the vehicle and whom Hagelgantz described as a white male of medium height and wearing a stocking cap, asked her for directions to the nearest town, as he said he needed gas.
It was after Hagelgantz directed the man toward town that she discovered her home had been burglarized.
Hawel said he later showed Hagelgantz a stack of photos, and asked her to pick out those who looked familiar.
After narrowing the pile to four photos, she was asked again to select the person who looked most like the stranger she encountered at her home.
Hagelgantz selected a picture of Wilson, he said.
The trial will resume Monday at 9:30 a.m. in the Osborne County Courthouse. The prosecution is expected to call its final two witnesses -- KBI DNA expert Michelle McGinniss and area coroner Lyle Noordhoek -- and the defense will begin its case.