Jury hears Becker tape

Mark Becker told an investigator that he shot coach Ed Thomas because he was a “devil tyrant” and so “the children could be free,” among other bizarre statements in an interview the day he shot and killed the well-known Aplington-Parkersburg football coach.

“He comes through and he makes - he turns us into fish and he turns us into animals and he turns us into dead people, but he won't let us be our true heavenly selves,” Becker said during the audio interview played for jurors Tuesday in the second day of testimony in Becker's first-degree murder trial.

The prosecution finished its case against Becker, 24, by midafternoon. The defense will start its case - an effort to convince jurors that Becker was insane at the time of the June 24 shooting - at 9 a.m. today in Butler County District Court.

The interview played in court was conducted by Chris Callaway, a special agent with the Division of Criminal Investigation.

Callaway said Becker confessed to shooting Thomas and didn't seem confused about being arrested or the charges he was facing. Callaway asked him several times during the interview if he understood his rights and if wanted to talk.

Becker didn't always answer Callaway's questions or explain the comments he gave.

Callaway, for example, asked Becker why he shot Thomas, but some of Becker's responses were indirect: “I think ... my presence, my white presence as in ... as in a godly presence or an angelic presence. That's all I can feel. All that crying and mumbling was because of human darkness.”

At one point, Becker said he felt no guilt or shame and believed he'd done the right thing in shooting Thomas.

He made several references to white people, as in “White people always win” or “White is white.”

Becker said he didn't decide to kill Thomas until the night before the shooting and alluded to hearing “voices.” He didn't know if it was him or “something got into me.”

Becker said he used deer antlers to break into his parents' gun cabinet the next morning and took a .22-caliber revolver. He loaded it and then fired it in the front and backyard to make sure the gun worked. Becker said he also went back out front and fired into the ground or then shot at a bird feeder.

Becker first said his aim was good but then said it wasn't. He said he thought “I'll just get really close to him. It was an act of God. That's all I can say.”

Becker described shooting Thomas with little emotion, saying he first shot Thomas in the hand.

“Then I put two more in his head and I put one in his knee, so he wouldn't get up. Then I finished off his skull.”

He thinks he shot Thomas six or seven times.

“Did you ever say anything to him today?” Callaway asked.

“No. He was babbling, and I think when he turned he said, ‘Oh, hey,' And then I shot him. But he was acting like he was man of the universe.”

Susan Flander of Waterloo, Becker's public defender, on cross-examination, went over Becker's bizarre or confusing comments and asked Callaway if he knew Becker's mental history, which includes a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia and hospitalizations.

Callaway said he knew about some of it.

Flander said Becker talked about seeing Satan in the interview room at one point and asked Callaway if he saw Satan. Callaway said he didn't.

“He said at one point you were glowing,” Flander said to Callaway. “Were you?”

Callaway said no.

Dr. Jerri McLemore, an associate state medical examiner, testified that Thomas was shot at least five times and had gunshot wounds to his head, chest and knee. He had significant wounds on the right and left sides of his head, his cheek bone area or nasal cavity, his left hand and a grazing on his chin, McLemore said. He also had blunt force injuries to his forehead, chest and leg - injuries consistent to someone stomping or kicking Thomas.

In testimony on Friday, some of the high school students who identified Mark Becker as the shooter said Becker stomped on Thomas after he was shot and lying on the ground.

“The cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds,” McLemore said. “The manner of death was homicide.”