Did Modesto man hire friend to kill his parents, or just talk about it? Case goes to jury
Jurors Monday morning are set to start deliberating whether a Modesto man hired a friend to kill his parents, a well-respected nurse practitioner and a business owner, whose bodies were found after their home went up in flames seven years ago.
David “Scott” Pettit and Janet Pettit were found dead inside their north Modesto home on Divan Court when firefighters responded to a fire there in the early morning hours of Aug. 8, 2013. They both had been shot multiple times and an accelerant was used to burn their bodies. Their son, Brandon, is charged with two counts of murder and one count of arson.
The prosecution said Brandon Pettit told multiple people he wanted his parents dead and that he had given co-defendant Felix Valverde bullets, the keys to his parents’ house and a $500 down payment to carry out the crimes.
The defense argued that because Brandon Pettit has Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of autism, he said things or behaved in a manner counter to social norms, that Valverde acted alone while Brandon Pettit was working a graveyard shift as a security guard in another city, and that Valverde easily could have entered the home through a large dog door.
Before the trial started Sept. 1, the court determined Valverde is not mentally competent to stand trial. He is awaiting transfer to a state hospital to restore competency.
This is the evidence that was presented during Brandon Pettit’s trial:
The motive behind the crime
Deputy District Attorney Rick Mury, in his closing arguments, pointed to all that Brandon Pettit stood to gain from his parents’ deaths: almost $1 million in his half of life insurance policies on his parents, their home and several rental homes and seven expensive vehicles. Some of them are classic cars, including a Corvette that Scott Pettit had brought as a project car for himself and his son.
When she testified as a defense witness, Brandon’s sister, Lauren Pettit, said her brother signed over his power of attorney to her and his rights to one of the insurance policies.
During cross examination, Lauren Pettit said both were signed over well after Brandon Pettit was arrested.
Susan Carter, with whom Brandon Pettit had a daughter who was born after his arrest, testified that four months before the murders she drove in the Corvette to a car show in the Bay Area.
During the drive, “He said he can’t wait until the car is his,” Carter said. “He said once his dad is dead, it’s his.”
Brandon Pettit had trouble holding down a job so Scott Pettit paid a close friend of his to hire Brandon at his construction business.
“He tried to do everything he could for Brandon,” the friend, Michael Anderson, testified. “One thing (Brandon) said that upset me was, ‘If my parents weren’t here I’d be better off.’
Anderson said that during a vigil for the Pettits several days after they were killed, Brandon pulled him aside and asked him about some of Scott Pettit’s cars that were stored at Anderson’s house.
“He said he wanted to sell the cars and head to Georgia,” Anderson testified.
Friends testified Brandon Pettit had talked about his desire to own a ranch in Montana and he’d shown Carter pictures of some of the multi-million dollar properties he wanted to purchase.
But around the time of his parents’ deaths, he began talking about purchasing a ranch in Georgia. But this time, instead of just talking about it, Brandon Pettit had contacted a real estate agent about the $1.3 million property.
Brandon Pettit told Sara Wilson, a girl with whom he recently had begun spending time, that his parents had bought a very expensive home in Georgia and that she could move there with him.
She said Brandon Pettit told her he’d brought plane tickets to go see it on Aug. 8, the day his parents were found dead.
The night before, at 10:43 p.m., he texted her, “You are getting a boob job for Christmas LOL.”
“Over and over and over again you hear him talking about money, his parents’ money,” Mury said during closing arguments. “He is spending millions of dollars, dollars that he can’t earn.”
The Means to pull it off
Carter testified that Brandon told her he knew someone who he could pay to kill her ex-husband.
Sgt. Mike Hicks, who was the lead detective on the case, testified about interviewing Alren Traster, one of Brandon Pettit’s friends.
Hicks said Traster told him they were at the H-B Saloon in Oakdale about a month before the murders when Brandon Pettit said he wanted to “off his parents” and that he gave someone $500 as a down payment.
When Traster testified, he acknowledged that Brandon Pettit said he wanted to “off his parents”. But Traster denied that Brandon said he’d paid someone $500 and said he didn’t remember telling Hicks that. Traster also dismissed the comment about wanting to off his parents as “bar talk.”
During cross-examination Winston asked Hicks why he didn’t follow up with a witness a different detective interviewed. The witness had told that detective he was present during the conversation in question and he never heard Brandon Pettit say those things. Hicks said he didn’t remember that portion of the detective’s report.
Hicks testified that when he interviewed Brandon Pettit about who might have wanted to hurt his parents the only theory he offered was that Carter, at that point his ex-girlfriend, had ties to the cartel and might have been involved.
Hicks said he asked Brandon Pettit who is friends were and Brandon gave him some names but not Valverde’s. When Hicks learned about Valverde from other friends and asked Brandon Pettit why he didn’t mention him, Brandon told him Valverede was trying to extort money from from him demanded $10,000 in exchange for not hurting his family.
When detectives searched Valverde’s Oakdale apartment they found Janet and Scott Pettit’s wallets and two keys to their home.
They also found seven .22 caliber shell casings in bushes at the complex where a neighbor testified he’d seen Valverde digging. The Pettits were shot seven times, Janet twice and Scott five times.
The defense
Winston said the prosecution presented no forensic evidence that the shell casings were from bullets that killed the Pettits.
Also, witnesses testified that Valverde had purchased a .22 caliber western style revolver a few weeks before the murders but detectives never found it.
The prosecution said Brandon Pettit gave Felix Valverde .22 caliber bullets but multiple boxes of .22 caliber bullets of different brands were found at Valverde’s apartment, Winton pointed out.
The prosecution said Brandon Pettit must have given Valverde the keys to the Pettit home because all of the entrances to the home were locked when firefighters got to the scene. But Winston argued that Valverde could have climbed through a large dog door, the same door that a detective and Brandon’s sister used to get into the house some time after the murders.
Winston asserted that the keys could have been in one of the Pettits’ wallets or that Valverde found them somewhere else in the home and took them after the murders.
Brandon’t sister and his aunt, Pam Mills, both testified that Brandon was very close with his family, particularly his father. They said he never showed aggression and that if Brandon had said to them the things the witnesses testified he said about wanting his parents dead, they never would have believed him.
Mills, a psychologist specializing in children with disabilities, said Brandon’s Asperger’s caused him to have very poor social skills and behave in a way that some people unfamiliar with autism might think odd.
Mills said Brandon didn’t “express grief in the traditional sense. Lauren and I were tearful and in shock ... he busied himself doing things around the house. He was not as communicative.”
“One of the key features of this disorder is that they are probably going to display emotions that would not match or be congruent to the situation,” said an expert witness who’d reviewed Brandon Pettit’s medical records and testified as a defense witness.
The expert said Brandon Pettit saying he wanted his parents dead could be a manifestation of a frustration he wasn’t able to properly express.
In his closing arguments, Winston dismissed much of the comments Brandon made about wanting his parents dead as ‘silly’ and ‘foolish’ or like Traster referred to them, ‘bar talk.’
Winston argued that detectives labeled Brandon Pettit as a suspect from the beginning.
Detectives had a “preconceived idea of how Brandon should react to his parents’ deaths,” Winston said. “They knew he had Asperger’s but they didn’t know how to factor that into their investigation. They had a tool and what did they do what that tool? They threw it on the ground, they tossed it away.”
The jury begins deliberation on the case at 9 a.m.
This story was originally published September 21, 2020 at 3:59 AM.
