First suspect in Korey Kauffman murder testifies against Modesto attorney, others

A defense attorney on Wednesday questioned the credibility of a key prosecution witness in the trial of Modesto attorney Frank Carson and two others accused of murder in the death of Turlock resident Korey Kauffman.

Kauffman was 26 years old when he disappeared in 2012. His remains were found more than a year later in a remote area of the Stanislaus National Forest in Mariposa County.

Testimony continues into the 10th month of the trial for Carson and brothers Baljit Athwal and Daljit Atwal. Prosecutors accuse Carson of being the ringleader of an effort to stop thieves from stealing antiques and scrap metal from his property on Ninth Street in Turlock.

Robert Lee Woody testified on Wednesday that he did not shoot Kauffman. “D shot him,” Woody said in a reference to Daljit Atwal.

Woody has agreed to a plea deal in exchange for his testimony. Hans Hjertonsson, Daljit Atwal’s attorney, asked Woody about his varying accounts about his knowledge in Kauffman’s death.

Woody told the jury that he has been in jail since his February 2014 arrest in Kauffman’s death. If convicted on that murder charge, Woody faced a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole. Woody told the jurors that his plea deal resulted in a sentence of seven years and four months.

Woody already has served nearly five years, and he could receive additional credit for time served for good behavior while in prison.

The prosecution says Kauffman was last seen alive leaving Michael Cooley’s home and heading to Carson’s property to steal irrigation pipes. Woody has claimed that brothers Baljit Athwal and Daljit Atwal were fighting with Kauffman on Carson’s property, when Kauffman was shot to death.

The brothers own a liquor store in Turlock, and Woody worked at the store. Woody has told authorities he helped bury Kauffman’s body near the liquor store and then helped dump the body in the national forest a few weeks later.

In 2012, Woody was questioned four times by investigators. He testified that he denied having any knowledge about Kauffman’s disappearance in those interviews.

In 2014, Woody was secretly recorded by his then-girlfriend. Woody told her that he killed Kauffman, pulled out his teeth and fed his remains to pigs. He later told authorities he lied to his girlfriend to impress her. Not long after, Woody learned authorities had issued an arrest warrant for him.

Woody told the jurors that he moved from motel to motel for about three days, trying to avoid arrest. He said he was drinking a lot of alcohol, smoking a lot of methamphetamine and sleeping very little before he turned himself in to investigators from the Stanislaus County District Attorney’s Office.

The investigators — Kirk Bunch, Steve Jacobson and Jon Evers — began questioning Woody in the evening of Feb. 28, 2014, continuing the interview in the early hours of the following day. They confronted Woody about the recorded conversation with his girlfriend.

Woody testified Wednesday that he told the investigators he was lying to his girlfriend, that it was one of various stories about Kauffman’s death he had heard from “the streets.” The investigators told Woody that they heard him claim he killed Kauffman in that recorded conversation with his girlfriend.

“Ha-ha, yeah, I know. You hear a lot of things come from my mouth,” Woody told the investigators, according to Hjertonsson reading from a transcript of the February 2014 interview.

In that same interview, Woody initially told investigators he didn’t know anything about Kauffman’s disappearance. “I was not there. I made it sound like I was there,” Woody said, according to Hjertonsson’s reading of the transcript.

The March 2014 interview then stopped for a 20-minute bathroom break. Defense attorneys say Woody and the investigators returned to the interview room, and Woody told investigators he saw Kauffman on the last night Kauffman was seen alive. The defense has argued that Woody later recanted that statement, telling his family and his defense team that authorities made him say those things.

On Wednesday, Hjertonsson went on to ask Woody a series of questions about the 2014 interview. More often than not, Woody answered the defense attorney’s questions with “I don’t recall,” even though he spent some time a few months ago reviewing recordings of the authorities questioning him about Kauffman’s death.

Woody told the jury Wednesday that he would not lie to avoid a prison sentence. Then, Hjertonsson asked Woody about his September 2016 testimony in a preliminary hearing. The defense attorney read in court a transcript of the testimony in which Woody says he would lie to avoid to life sentence.

Woody was the first to be charged with murder in Kauffman’s death. After Carson and others were arrested in connection with the case in August 2015, Woody decided to cooperate with the prosecution.

The prosecution believes Carson led a conspiracy and recruited people to send a violent message, which led to Kauffman’s death.

This story was originally published January 16, 2019 at 4:45 PM.