Witness saw body in accused's room

9/30/2006

Donald Robinson said Dellmus Colvin asked him to do something unusual hours after he saw Jackie Simpson with Colvin in a room at a South Toledo motel.

Colvin wanted Robinson to bring bleach, rubber gloves, and a blanket to the Toledo Budget Inn Motel on South Reynolds Road.

Testifying yesterday at Colvin's trial in Lucas County Common Pleas Court, Robinson said he took the items to the motel room, where he got a glimpse of what he believed was Ms. Simpson's body, covered with a sheet.

"I saw what appeared to be somebody lying in the bed. I could only see the arm extended out. The rest of it was covered," Robinson said.

Colvin, 47, is charged with aggravated murder and kidnapping in the deaths of Ms. Simpson and Melissa Weber. The murder charges include death-penalty specifications.

In the second day of testimony, Robinson, 45, told jurors that Colvin would not allow him into the room.

He said Colvin told him the woman had suffered a seizure, but Robinson said the defendant told him later he suffocated the victim with a pillow because she would not shut up.

"He said she was making too much noise," he testified.

Prosecutors said the victims worked as prostitutes to finance their addiction to crack cocaine. The decomposed bodies of the women were found about two miles apart in industrial areas in the city's north end.

Ms. Weber, 37, was found May 9, 2005, under a couch in a vacant trucking terminal behind 1045 Matzinger Rd. Ms. Simpson was discovered April 23, 2003, under bushes near a tanning business at 4200 Creekside Ave. Both victims had been dumped and had been missing for several months.

Ms. Simpson was wrapped in a quilted comforter bound with strips of bed sheet tagged with the Budget Inn Motel logo.

Robinson identified the purple quilt as the same one he gave to the defendant at the motel.

Colvin, who was employed as a truck driver, also is charged in the sexual assaults of two other prostitutes.

He was indicted on kidnapping and rape for allegedly attacking a 47-year-old woman in April, 2004. He is charged with rape for the alleged assault in July, 2003, on a 31-year-old woman.

Toledo police Detective Regina Lester testified that the woman in the 2004 sexual assault identified Colvin as the man who beat and raped her in the cab of a tractor-trailer in North Toledo.

The woman escaped from her attacker in a parking lot in the 600 block of East Manhattan Boulevard.

The trial will resume Monday in the courtroom of Judge Thomas Osowik.