PANAMA CITY — The $12,000 in silver coins found on Philip Dean Brock’s property was only a fraction of the riches prosecutors claimed he collected after his neighbor’s murder and robbery, jurors heard during Wednesday’s trial.
But defense attorneys said the missing coins show evidence on the scene was tainted.
Prosecutors entered their second full day of calling witnesses in the murder case of Terry Brazil, 65, during Wednesday’s trial. Brazil was found Dec. 27, 2012 stabbed, shot and beaten after apparently being bound with duct tape in his Fountain home. Since that time, three juries have failed to convict 58-year-old Brock, Brazil’s friend and neighbor, with his murder.
Prosecutor Larry Basford continued arguing his case that Brock was motivated to kill and rob Brazil by greed. He presented jurors with a jailhouse phone call in which Brock admitted to not only possessing $12,000 in silver coins — suspected to be Brazil’s — but also having much more hidden in a pool filter on his property.
“The bolt holding it shut was gone and now some bread tie was on it,” Brock said in the phone conversation. “So somebody’s been in it and two-thirds are missing.”
Sgt. Mark Bailey, Bay County Sheriff’s Office’s case agent on the murder, said the amount of silver coins stolen from the multitudes of empty coin casings in Brazil’s home was difficult to determine. But when they found his body, which had been decaying for about two weeks, BCSO began with a search of his land-line phone records.
Victim’s last conversation
From those records, the last person to speak with Brazil was Andrew Hendricks, another Fountain neighbor, for 176 minutes on Dec. 11.
“We always talked about lawnmowers, cars and guns,” Hendricks testified. “And if anyone wasn’t listening to us, we’d drop some words on them.”
The next day, Hendricks couldn’t get Brazil on the phone. That’s when he noticed Brazil’s gold Cadillac was missing, he told officers when the murder investigation began.
Brazil sold guns out of his home, so BCSO had several suspects in his death.
“We had so many leads to follow up at that point,” Bailey said. “Anyone who had contact with Brazil was a suspect.”
After BCSO announced they were seeking the car, Brock called them and said he had the Cadillac, according to Bailey’s testimony. Many of Brock’s friends who previously testified he had no want for riches were suspected in Brazil’s murder at one point. But a video from the U.S. 231 Piggly Wiggly in Fountain of Brock driving the Cadillac, moments after authorities suspected Brazil was murdered, narrowed their list of suspects.
Brock was arrested after BCSO found guns and commemorative coins in his home that once belonged to Brazil.
Brock frequently exchanged glares with Bailey as he explained how BCSO came to discover the silver coins in a pool filter at Brock’s home after two mistrials, about 10 months later. When Bailey testified that a joke about throwing the pool filter out unless it contained the missing silver led to Brock’s son lifting the lid with ease, Brock shook his head in disapproval.
The defense has highlighted the lack of evidence presented by BCSO and the prosecution. Many of the murder weapons were never recovered. A bed post, believed to be used to bludgeon Brazil, and duct tape was found in the woods across from his home two weeks after investigators suspect Brazil was murdered.
Several of his personal effects also were never located, including his wallet and cellphone. Brock’s counsel also argued Wednesday that since BCSO never recovered Brazil’s cellphone records, their determination of when Brazil died or who he last spoke with could be flawed.
Brock faces life in prison if convicted. His trial is expected to continue through Friday.