Conviction, death sentence reversed in 1996 Amarillo capital murder case

Yahoo

11-03-2025

Judges with the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the conviction and death sentence of a 52-year-old woman convicted of capital murder in Amarillo 26 years ago.
The judges found that prosecutors improperly withheld information from defense attorneys that their key witness in Brittany Marlow Holberg's capital murder trial was a confidential informant.
The judges believed that information was material, and therefore subject to what's known as the "Brady Rule," since prosecutors heavily relied on Vickie Marie Kirkpatrick's testimony to convict Holberg and secure a death sentence.
Holberg is the only death row inmate out of Randall County at present.
"We find that if the State had disclosed Kirkpatrick's status as a confidential informant, there is a reasonable probability that the result of Holberg's proceedings would have been different," Circuit Judge Patrick E. Higginbotham wrote in the majority opinion.
More: Attorney details drug-fueled spiral that led to murder
The 2-1 ruling kicks the case back to the indictment phase. Randall County District Attorney Robert Love declined to comment on how his office will proceed.
Holberg's appellate attorney, David F. Abernethy, did not respond to an email seeking comment
Holberg, who at the time was a 23-year-old cocaine-addicted prostitute, was charged in connection with the Nov. 13. 1996 slaying of 80-year-old A.B. Towery, Sr. during a fight in his home.
Prosecutors believed she killed Towery while robbing him of money.
Responding officers found Towery in his home dead from multiple stab wounds. Part of a lamp was stuck in his throat.
Meanwhile, Holberg left the apartment covered in cuts and bruises. She also bled from the head where she said Towery struck her and tore out clumps of her hair, according to court documents.
Holberg was arrested in Memphis in February 1997 and was extradited to Amarillo, where she was held in the Randall County Jail.
During her trial, Holberg told jurors that she had an ongoing relationship with Towery, who was a former customer of her. As part of the relationship, she said, 'sexual favors [were] exchanged for money.'
She said there were times when 'he got angry' and frightened her. She said Towery would get angry if he 'had a hard time performing' or if he thought she was on drugs when with him.
Holberg said she killed Towery that night in self-defense.
She said she was high on crack cocaine that night and had wrecked her car before going to Towery's apartment and met him as he was bringing in his groceries.
She said the elderly man became upset with her when he saw her crack pipe in the kitchen and started screaming at her, saying, 'You stupid [expletive], [expletive]. What do you want? You want money? Is that what you want to do so you can smoke the rest of the day away?'
Holberg told jurors that Towery approached her from behind, struck her on the back of her head and shoved her to the floor.
At some point during the struggle, Towery pulled money out from his wallet and threw it at her.
She said Towery pulled Holberg by her hair and refused to stop even after she begged him to release her.
Fearing for her life and fueled by crack cocaine, she overcame Towery and stabbed him repeatedly -- 58 times according to an autopsy report.
The evidence showed Holberg also beat Towery with a claw hammer multiple times.
'I lost it," Holberg told jurors.
Holberg told jurors that she didn't kill Towery for his money and drugs but did take the cash he threw at her.
Meanwhile, prosecutors told jurors that Holberg's self-defense claim was belied by the savagery of Towery's injuries.
They called on Kirkpatrick to challenge Holbergs' version of events.
At the time, Kirkpatrick, who worked as a confidential informant for an Amarillo police corporal, was arrested on a burglary charge in May 1997 and placed in the same cell as Holberg.
Two days later, Kirkpatrick gave a statement to Amarillo police detailing Holberg's alleged admission that she started the fight and killed Towery for drugs.
That same day, the police officer who worked with Kirkpatrick was able to dismiss a criminal trespass charge against her and helped her bond out of jail on the felony burglary charge.
The details in Kirkpatrick's statement corroborated findings from Towery's autopsy report and the crime scene investigation, which had been with law enforcement for six months.
She told jurors that Holberg told her she stabbed Towery with a fork and that she had stuck the lamp down Towery's throat because she got tired of hearing him make 'gurgling' or 'gagging' noises.
Kirkpatrick told jurors that Holberg said she enjoyed killing Towery, saying she thought the 'fountain' of blood was 'pretty,' 'fun,' and 'amazing'; and that Holberg would do it all over again for more drugs.
Meanwhile, Holberg told jurors that she never spoke with Kirkpatrick at the jail.
Melissa Wisemen, who also shared the same cell as Holberg and Kirkpatrick, told jurors she never heard a conversation between Holberg and Kirkpatrick in which Holberg described killing Towery.
Jurors convicted Holberg and later sentenced her to death.
However, Holberg's attorneys, and therefore the jury, were unaware of Kirkpatrick's status as a confidential police informant who was paid to help with undercover drug buys. In fact, Kirkpatrick's efforts helped the Amarillo police run approximately 40 search warrants and secure multiple convictions.
After Holberg's conviction and sentence, Kirkpatrick stood trial for an unrelated charge and was described by prosecutors and police witnesses as a confidential information who had helped the Amarillo Police Department on "many, many things."
Kirkpatrick would later recant her testimony more than a decade later. In Holberg's initial appeal, Kirkpatrick said prosecutors leveraged her pending burglary charge to ensure her testimony against Holberg.
Defense attorneys also spoke with other jail inmates who reportedly said jailers questioned several inmates about Holberg and offered "deals" if they could help the prosecution.
One inmate reportedly said she was approached twice by the people from the District Attorney's Office to give testimony against Brittany.
"Specifically, Kirkpatrick stated that then-District Attorney James Farren coached her statements at Holberg's trial, and that Farren both 'threatened to send Kirkpatrick to jail if she did not give him what he wanted but also offered her a deal if she cooperated.'
Kirkpatrick also said she believed Holberg was remorseful and sad about [Towery's] death, and that she never used the words 'fountain,' 'pretty,' 'fun,' or 'amazing' when discussing the slaying.
The judges said the recantation destroyed Kirkpatrick's credibility. Either she was lying at trial or she was lying now.
"Against this context, the State's intentional nondisclosure of Kirkpatrick's informant status strikes at the heart of the jury's conviction, and most assuredly its sentence of death," the judges ruled.
However, in a dissenting opinion, Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan said the record before the court shows that Kirkpatrick's role in Holberg's conviction was not as crucial to Holberg's conviction.
He said the physical evidence, particularly the brutality of Towery's injuries, goes beyond self-defense.
"No jury in its right mind would believe that a 23-year-old cocaine-addled prostitute 'defended' herself against a frail old man by (1) stabbing him 58 times, (2) bludgeoning him with various objects including a steam iron, and (3) ramming a lamp base down his throat while he was still alive," Duncan wrote.
However, the majority of the judges believed prosecutors heavily relied on Kirkpatrick's testimony -- particularly her description of how Holberg enjoyed killing Towery -- to secure the conviction and during the punishment phase of the trial when they asked for the death sentence.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Death sentence vacated in 1996 Amarillo capital murder case