Now he's saying he heard her scream and saw her fall. I've been reading various articles, his story keeps changing.
I think this is his final story and he's stickin' to it!
fran
http://www.miningjournal.net/page/content.detail/id/507882.html
Undercover cop recorded Richardson
MUNISING — On a police surveillance videotape played for the jury Monday, Thomas David Richardson talks openly, detailing his wife Juanita’s final moments.
Michigan State Police trooper Natalie Torres made the videotape while working undercover as a prospective girlfriend for Richardson in October 2006.
...............snip............
Richardson offered to let Torres read his written “testament” of what happened. He said he had written the account down on the advice of his attorney.
Torres preferred to let Richardson detail the events aloud.
Richardson began by saying, “I was standing there watching Juanita. She was looking at me. I was on my way back from the bathroom.”
Richardson — who said he had been suffering from diarrhea for two days — said normally his wife would have accompanied him back to the park visitor center bathroom, but didn’t because her foot was sore.
“She had her left foot crushed in a three-wheeler accident years before and had reconstructive surgery,” Richardson said. “And in the morning that foot hurts and when the weather changes that foot hurts and we were in both of those scenarios at the time.”
Consequently, Richardson said his wife decided to wait there until he came back from the bathroom.
“When I walked back, she was standing there like three-footish, two-and-a-half feet from the edge. She wasn’t standing right at the edge like everybody thinks,” Richardson said.
Richardson said his wife was looking him in the face, facing away from the water, as he came off the main path, walking toward her.
“She was smiling ear-to-ear and I was waiting for her to say, ‘Check this out’ or ‘Look at what I saw,’ or ‘You gotta see this’ and she started turning around,” Richardson said.
Richardson next tells Torres his wife was wearing open-toed sandals that day, after having suffered a broken little toe when she accidentally kicked a decorative tree root-styled banister support in their house.
“And as she turned, she just (pause) fell,” Richardson said. “And she kind of just hit the edge and her hands were past the edge where she could break her fall.
“And she kind of just hit and rolled and was gone. She said, as she was falling, I heard her scream, ‘Oh, my God’ or ‘Oh, dear God’ and when she hit, she just kind of hit, hit and rolled over the edge. And I heard her scream on the way down.”
Richardson said he then “piled up like a sack of potatoes” and “fainted right there on the spot.”
snip........................
Weaver said Richardson told her
he has a closed head injury, which results in his passing out, to keep him from taking in hurtful things.
