GRANVILLE, N.C. — A judge denied a defense attorney’s motion Tuesday to have statements made to police by Edward Campbell about his son’s behavior during their late-2014 crime spree admitted into evidence in Eric Campbell’s double murder trial.
Eric Campbell, 23, is on trial in Granville County (NC), in connection with the New Year’s Eve 2014 deaths of Jerome and Dora Faulkner. They were found murdered in their Oak Hill, North Carolina home. Their bodies were found in the back of a truck that Edward Campbell was driving when he pulled over on Interstate 64 in Greenbrier County on New Year’s Day 2015 after his son, in another vehicle, had been stopped by local police. Edward Campbell opened fire on two police officers.
Edward Campbell took his own life in jail in 2015 but before that he gave police statements about the crime spree that began in Texas. In those statements, Campbell indicated his son had no knowledge of his plot to murder the Faulkners. Granville Detective Doug McPhee read a portion of the statements in court Tuesday.
“That boy didn’t have anything to do with this North Carolina (explicit) I’m going in for, you aren’t going to find any prints from him anywhere around there,” Edward Campbell told police. “Up there in (explicit) what you call it (West Virginia), they beat the (explicit) out of him and he probably said whatever they wanted him to say. He had some suspicions but I am an authoritarian dad and he is not going to question me, he was trying to get me to go back to Texas.”
Campbell said his son was innocent and that was the only reason he opened fire on two West Virginia police officers.
“When they were first pulling over, I was thinking I could let him go to jail and then bail him out, but he was terrified,” the elder Campbell told police. “That is why I did what I did, I didn’t offer him the opportunity to leave with them, that is the only reason I stopped otherwise I would have made a clean getaway.”
Campbell’s statements would have corroborated with the defense attorney’s narrative that Eric Campbell was abused and too afraid of his father to go against his demands. But the judge ruled against the defense and said the statements could not be submitted into evidence, stating Edward Campbell had clear motivation to lie and try and get his son off of any criminal charges.
Edward Campbell made multiple statements to police indicating he was planning to kill himself and never face trial, which the judge said was another reason Campbell may have lied in an attempt to save his son.
Testimony in Eric Campbell’s trial is expected to continue Wednesday.
Troy Alexander also contributed to this story.