YORK COUNTY, S.C. — After six days of testimony and dozens of witnesses, the murder trial of Julia Phillips in York County will soon be in the hands of a jury.
Phillips is accused of being an accomplice in the strangulation death of 79-year-old Melvin Roberts in 2010. Roberts was a prominent lawyer and former mayor of York. Phillips was his girlfriend for about a dozen years. Roberts was struck in the head, shot at and strangled with a zip tie outside his home in York.
Phillips claimed it was robbery attempt, and told police she was tied up with duct tape and pushed to the ground before Roberts was killed. However, nothing was stolen from the scene, and police believe Phillips' story is a lie. They claim she orchestrated the crime because Roberts was about to end their relationship and cut her off financially.
In his will, she was set to inherit a building in downtown Gaffney worth $150,000.
Prosecutors have alleged that Phillips was going to be near penniless, if Roberts removed her from his will, as he intended to do.
Roberts' son Ronnie is now responsible for the house where his father once lived. He said he not only maintains it, but has worked to keep it in exactly the same condition it was in on the night of the murder. Police have continued to return to the crime scene over the years. Now, the Roberts family is finally about to have at least some of the answers they've been longing for.
David Roberts said everyone is anxious.
"Tomorrow is the day," he said. "What that jury says is really all that matters."
On Wednesday, Phillips was asked if she wanted to testify, and said no. She said she was up since 4 in the morning, praying about it.
"I grew up a Christian, I am a Christian, and my most confidence is in god anyway, not in the court room," she said, when the jury was not in the room.
David Roberts said his family would've like to have heard from Phillips.
"I fully well know that I may never hear what she has to say, and that's something, yeah, I have to live with," he said.
The jury however, heard a great deal from Phillips during her trial, in her 911 call and in hours of police interviews. Prosecutors said she incriminated herself by constantly changing her story.
Those inconsistencies in her statements include the description of the robber, what he said to her during the assault, when she first noticed Roberts' body, and other details about what she saw and heard.
Phillips gave about a dozen statements to police in the weeks following the murder.
At one point she told police she saw the headlights on Roberts' truck coming up the driveway, even though she claimed at the time that her eyes were wrapped with duct tape.
During the trial, prosecutor Kris Hodge pointed out that Phillips had gunshot residue on her clothes that would likely only have come from shooting a gun, or being near someone who did. It's that discovery that police said gave them probable cause to arrest her.
However, on Wednesday, a defense expert testified that residue can be transferred from anything someone touches, including a police car.
Phillips wasn't tested for gunshot residue until she was at the police department, because it was raining that night.
Chris Robinson testified that it could've been picked up from the police car she rode in.
"The first rule is, you never place an individual in a police car, before you test them for gunshot residue," Robinson said. "It can be easily transferred from once surface to another."
Roberts' family endured six days of often-disturbing details about the murder, and watched Phillips on video re-enacting the whole event.
David Roberts said he never saw genuine sadness, from the woman who spent so many years with his father.
"She doesn't show much emotion. She hasn't show a lot of emotions since the day my father was killed," he said.
Phillips could spend the rest of her life in prison if she's convicted. However, the closure of the case is incomplete, because a second person who police believe actually killed Melvin Roberts has not been arrested or identified.
After years of investigating and taking DNA samples from roughly 70 people, the case remains partially unsolved. Prosecutors began their case with those same words, hoping that the jury will find that there's still enough evidence that Phillips acted as an accomplice to the crime.
That jury is made up of six women and six men after one of the jurors had to leave Wednesday, because she had a child admitted to the hospital. One of the three alternate jurors replaced her.
Closing arguments will begin Thursday morning.