A month after investigators showed up at Lecester Woodall’s home asking about the theft of weapons during a burglary at his home in May 2000, Glynn County Police Investigator Jay Wiggins and GBI Walter Lanier approached Lecester “Buddy” Woodall Jr. at his job site.
They wanted to talk to him about the burglary at his father’s place and asked if he would come with them. Woodall agreed.
Golden Isles Injustice
Part 4
The questions on March 13, 2001, soon turned to the killings of his uncle Lavelle Lynn and Robert VanAllen back on Labor Day. Woodall said he wasn’t surprised because around Christmas his cousin and Lynn’s daughter Belinda Whitlow told him the police might want to talk to him. Whitlow said that when the family was shown store’s video footage, she told the investigators she thought Buddy Woodall was on the video.
On the day of the double homicide, someone called Lynn’s home from the Paige’s convenience store closest to the murder scene on Bladen Road in Glynn County, just past the county line with Brantley County.
Buddy Woodall said GCPD Lt. Tom Tindale was so aggressive, he got mad and didn’t mention it until Wiggins and Lanier were taking him back to his jobsite. Woodall said he told them he knew they knew he had been in the store the morning of the double homicide.
Wiggins testified later they hadn’t identified Woodall in the video. Hearing Woodall say he was there was the “Ah Ha!” moment in the investigation, he believed.
Buddy Woodall went to see his minister the next day. Mostly he wanted to ask to borrow money to pay his probation officer so he wouldn’t be arrested as the detectives who questioned him indicated he would be if he didn’t pay up, Woodall told The Augusta Press. Buddy Woodall had a DUI conviction.
The minister told Buddy Woodall in no uncertain terms that he was going to be arrested for murder, and he needed to talk to a lawyer immediately. What the minister told him didn’t sink in right away, but when it did, all he could think about was getting home to his wife and boys.
Buddy Woodall said he didn’t sleep for two days because of the stress of thinking at any moment the police were going to come break the door down. On March 15, 2001, he went to one of his two jobs he was working then. By the end of the workday, he thought the police must have realized they were wrong. He said he was so relieved he drank some beers after work with his coworkers. He also took some Xanax.
When he got home the police were waiting. He and his wife, Kristy, consented to the search of their home and vehicles. Officers wanted to take Kristy’s car, a blue four-door Pontiac 6000. Tire tracks were left at the murder scene, and they wanted to see if the Woodall’s Pontiac was a match. They also asked Buddy Woodall to come in for more questions. Because his parents, who were at his house before the searches started, could come, too, Woodall said he agreed. He even drove the Pontiac to the station for them after taking out his sons’ car seats.
Officers questioned Buddy Woodall for 12 hours during which Buddy Woodall repeatedly pleaded to go home. GBI Agent Walter Lanier assured Buddy Woodall several times that he could go home as soon as they finished with the questions. Finally, Buddy Woodall told the officers what they wanted to hear. Woodall said he only did so because Lanier threatened him, told him that what happened to his uncle could also happen to his family.
Buddy Woodall said he repeated back to them what they had already said: he was there when his brother-in-law David Wimberly shot and killed his uncle and VanAllen. Afterward Wimberly gave him $300 and told him to keep his mouth shut.
The police started working on the Wimberly family. Officers talked to David’s and Kristy’s stepmother and a stepsister. They said Brandi Lassin, David’s and Kristy’s sister, told them Wimberly said he, Buddy Woodall and Brantley County Sheriff Cordell Wainwright’s son killed Lynn and VanAllen. Investigators tried to talk to Lassin, but she told them she knew nothing and had nothing to say.
GBI Agent Toby Taylor obtained a warrant March 23, 2001, for Lassin’s arrest for making a false statement. She was accused of lying when she failed to tell them that her brother told her that he, Buddy Woodall and Sheriff Wainwright’s son killed Lynn and VanAllen. Lassin asked for a lawyer. GBI Agent Lanier told her she wasn’t entitled to a lawyer because she wasn’t accused of murder, according to a transcript of the interrogation. She asked for a lawyer again and again was told she wasn’t entitled to one.
But Lassin was accused of a felony crime that could have meant a five-year prison term. She was entitled to remain silent and to have an attorney, just like everyone else in the United States. She continued to insist she didn’t know anything. The authorities put her in jail. She lost custody of her children, Kristy Woodall said.
On March 28, 2001, Glynn County Police Lt. Scott Trautz and GBI Agent Tom Stalvey were waiting for Jeffrey “J.R.” Wimberly at his probation officer’s office. He had to take a drug test, which he failed because he had been smoking pot and drinking most every day, he later said. His probation officer told him his choices were to talk to the police or go to prison. J.R. Wimberly told investigators that his brother, David Wimberly, was with him most of the day Labor Day 2000. J.R. Wimberly said Trautz told him that wasn’t good enough. He needed to implicate his brother and Woodall in the murders or he would be locked up. Trautz asked him if he knew they had already locked up his sister Brandi Lassin. He did.
J.R. Wimberly’s last sentence in his written statement: the day before the murders, his brother and Woodall asked him to help them rob Woodall’s uncle. J.R. Wimberly’s teen-age girlfriend, terrified at being taken in by police, said she heard them ask Wimberly to join the robbery.
David Wimberly had been arrested two days earlier on March 26, 2001. When questioned, he denied any involvement in the killings. If Woodall was going to rob someone, Woodall would have asked his buddy Arnold “Chip” Pine, Wimberly said. When confronted with the information that his brother J.R. Wimberly told them that he and Woodall asked him to join the robbery plot the day before the murders, David Wimberly was stunned. He didn’t say anything else. J.R. Wimberly, however, didn’t give his written statement until two days later.
March 28, 2001, Woodall’s friend Arnold “Chip” Pine reported Woodall had had a small caliber gun with a pearl handle.
The .25-calber handgun stolen from Woodall’s parents in the May 8, 2000, burglary had a pearl handle. A spent .25-caliber bullet GCPD officers said they found at a site where the Woodall family had practiced shooting was allegedly fired from the same gun as one of the bullets that killed VanAllen.
According to the investigative report given to Woodall’s attorney, the son of the Brantley County sheriff, Jeffery Wainwright, who was allegedly with Woodall and Wimberly, wasn’t never questioned.
Kristy Woodall said that not long after Buddy was arrested, he was offered a deal. If he agreed to testify against David Wimberly, the murder charges against him would be dropped and he would get a 10-year prison term for armed robbery. Kristy Woodall said he turned it down because he wasn’t going to plead guilty to something he didn’t do.
The district attorney filed notice of his intention to seek a death sentence if Buddy Woodall and/or David Wimberly was convicted of murder.
Woodall was offered another plea deal – if he would agree to testify against Wimberly they’d agree to a life sentence.
Woodall refused.
Sandy Hodson is a staff reporter covering courts for The Augusta Press. Reach her at sandy@theaugustapress.com.
