Lurid details come to light in case of murdered El Dorado Hills mother

By Peter Hecht - phecht@sacbee.com

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Fourteen-year-old Tylar Marie Witt was furious with her mother, fascinated in graphic journal entries over her dying in a car accident and asked a friend on his MySpace page if he knew how she could get some arsenic.

Those were among lurid details introduced in court today as authorities in El Dorado County began a multi-day hearing to determine if the El Dorado Hills girl should stand trial as an adult in the slaying of her mother, Joanne M. Witt, 47.

Witt and her boyfriend, Stephen Paul Colver, 19, are charged with killing Joanne Witt on June 11 or June 12 after the mother filed a statutory rape report against Colver over his relationship with her daughter.

CBS 13 coverage of case

Testimony by investigators, including a deputy who found Joanne Witt's slashed body in the bedroom of her home, revealed a portrait of a tumultuous mother-daughter relationship.

It ended with the mother's brutal stabbing death - at the hands of Colver, authorities say - and the teen lovers fleeing toward San Francisco with plans to carry out a suicide pact.

Joanne Witt's body was found in her home in the 200 block of Tattinger court after co-workers at the El Dorado County Department of Transportation, where she worked in the engineering unit, reported her missing.

Authorities say a murder plot escalated after Joanne Witt agreed to take Colver into her home and later discovered their sexual relationship, despite claims by her daughter to various people that he was a platonic "big brother" figure and gay.

In a journal entry read in court, Witt wrote: "My mother is driving me insane. I can't stand her company for more than five minute. I hate her. She is bi-polary (sic) insane and is turning me into the same thing. I just wish she would die somehow, some way...and leave me the (expletive) alone."

The journal goes on to describe in vivid detail how Witt hoped her mother was killed in a violent car crash. And it describes her sexual relationship with Colver and says: "I don't know how long we can keep our love frm my mother."

Testimony by authorities today said the youth's anger overflowed after she learned Joanne Witt handed over her journal to a sheriff's investigator.

Judge James Wagoner is to determine whether Witt should be tried as an adult based on factors including the gravity of the crime and the level of sophistication of Witt's alleged involvement.

"She was the one who wanted this to happen," prosecutor Lizette Suder said of Witt's involvement in the murder authorities say was carried out by her boyfriend. "She was the mastermind behind it."

Witt, dressed in a grey sweatshirt, dabbed her eyes with her sleeves as detectives read from her journal and outlined evidence in the case.

El Dorado County Detective Richard Fitzgerald testified that Witt told a friend that she spiked a brandy beverage of her mother's with Vicodin and "waited for her mom to pass out."

Fitzgerald testified that Colver told the same friend, as they were smoking rock cocaine after the murder, that he had killed "Tylat's mom" with a kitchen butcher knife, stabbing her in the chest, neck and slashing her throat."

Fitzgerald said the friend - a youth nicknamed "God" - told authorities that Colver then went to his car and retrieved a "a shopping bag with a knife in it." He said "God" told authorities the blade as "covered in blood."

He said Witt told the same friend that she heard her mother speak her boyfriend's nickname - "Boston" - "once or twice as the final wounds were inflicted."

El Dorado County Detective Michael Lensing, who interviewed Witt after she and Colver where detained by authorities in San Bruno on June 17, told him they "were gong to runaway together and commit suicide." He said a friend told authorities they planned to take rat poisoning after checking into a San Francisco hotel.

Before the killing, Fitzgerald said another friend told investigators that Witt asked him on his MySpace page if he knew how to get arsenic. He said he asked her if she intended to kill her mother and Witt answered that she was "just kidding."

After the murder, the friends had another internet exchange.

"You sicken me beyond anything," Fitzgerald said Witt's friend wrote. "...You really killed her."

"I didn't say that," the detective said Witt wrote back. "Now she's gone. I'm weeping. But I'm free."