Jury Considers Case Against Clairemont Man in Woman’s Killing

A jury is deliberating today after hearing closing arguments Wednesday in the murder trial of Vernon Walton, accused of killing Margaret Rodriguez on the night before Thanksgiving last year and hiding her body in a canyon behind his Clairemont home.

During the trial, the jury heard testimony that the two were together at a bar the last night she was seen alive, and that she told friends she planned to go home with Walton that night, Deputy Dist. Atty. Brock Arstill told the panel.

Rodriguez’s badly decomposed body was found Feb. 4 in a canyon 120 feet from Walton’s home.

“We know they were both in the bar. They were both there late, and they both left together,” Arstill said.

He also pointed to a small amount of type A blood--the same type as Rodriguez’s--found on a Venetian blind in Walton’s home as evidence the murder was committed there.

Walton’s attorney, Bill Youmans, said the case against his client is based completely on “weak” circumstantial evidence. He pointed to the inability to determine the cause of death because of the severe decomposition of the woman’s body.

Youman’s said type A blood is a common blood type, and the blood found on the blind could have belonged to anyone.

He added that the small amount found would not be consistent with a murder scene and that there were “equally plausible” explanations for her body being found naked at the bottom of the canyon.

The defense attorney attempted to raise doubts as to whether she was murdered at all, despite testimony from the medical examiner stating that homicide was the likely cause of death. But he added that, if she were slain, there were others that could have done it. Citing her lifestyle, which included living out of a camper, Youmans called the 50-year-old woman a “user of men.”

“Do you honestly think that this man, who was dead drunk at 9:20 p.m., was the only man that she teased that night, that she quote, unquote came on to that night?” Youmans asked the jury. “We know that there were a lot of people in the bar that she knew that night.”

During his rebuttal, Arstill told jurors that circumstantial evidence is sufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Walton, 41, killed Rodriguez.