Grisly Slaying Detailed

Returning to the stand Tuesday to continue his grisly testimony about the killing of a transgender teenager, Jaron Chase Nabors said that after he and his three accused accomplices buried the body, they went to a McDonald’s for breakfast.

Nabors, 19, testified that even after the burial of Eddie “Gwen” Araujo, co-defendant Jose Antonio Merel continued to brood angrily over the fact that Araujo had passed himself off as a female, saying, “I could still kick her a couple of times.”

In testimony at the preliminary hearing Monday, Nabors said that in the weeks before the killing, both Merel and co-defendant Michael William Magidson had anal sex with the 17-year-old victim, apparently not realizing that Araujo, who used the names “Lida” and “Gwen,” was biologically male.

After confirming that fact at a party at Merel’s home in the Bay Area town of Newark on Oct. 3, Magidson tried to choke the pleading victim and Merel struck Araujo in the head with a soup can and a frying pan, Nabors said Monday.

On Tuesday, he told how the assault continued. He said Magidson punched and kneed Araujo in the face, so hard that the plaster wall behind the victim was “indented and cracked.”

Nabors said Magidson bound Araujo’s hands and feet with a rope, and he, Magidson and the fourth defendant, Jason Michael Cazares, carried the bleeding and still-conscious victim to a garage attached to the home.

Nabors testified that he saw Magidson starting to pull the loose end of the rope toward Araujo’s head, but he said he left before he saw what happened next.

However, under questioning by prosecutors, Nabors acknowledged that he had written a letter to a girlfriend in which he said he saw Magidson place the rope around Araujo’s neck.

And in further testimony, Nabors said Magidson later told how he “wrapped rope around Lida’s neck and twisted it. He said he kept twisting it.”

Minutes later, one of the defendants allegedly struck Araujo twice with a shovel.

“Mike wasn’t sure if Lida had died from twisting the rope, but when Jay hit her with the shovel, he knew for sure,” Nabors said.

Magidson, Merel and Cazares, seated 15 feet away, started intently at Nabors during his testimony, looking away only to write notes. Nabors did not meet their gazes.

Nabors took the stand after he struck a deal with prosecutors, pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter in exchange for his testimony. Under the agreement reached Monday, he will serve 11 years in state prison. Before the deal, Nabors, who led police to Araujo’s body, had faced a murder charge that carried a possible sentence of 25 years to life.

Magidson, 22, Merel, 23, and Cazares, 22, have pleaded not guilty to murder charges filed under the state’s hate-crimes statute. The hate-crime enhancement against Nabors was dropped as part of his plea agreement.

Nabors testified that after what apparently was a fatal garroting with the rope, Magidson and Cazares carried Araujo outside. The limp body, wrapped in a comforter, was placed in the back of Magidson’s pickup, along with three shovels and a pickax to be used in the burial, he said.

Nabors said Merel gave him a shirt to replace the one he was wearing.

“It’s a nice shirt,” he said of his own, explaining that “I didn’t want to wear it [because] it was going to get dirty. We were going to bury Lida.”

Although they had no clear plan, the defendants headed for Silver Fork, a small resort community in the Sierra Nevada near an area where Magidson had once camped, Nabors said. He said that during the trip, which took about four hours, Merel used a cell phone to call the mattress warehouse where he worked, saying he would not be in that day.

After driving deep into the forest, they stopped and began digging, Nabors said. They created a grave about 3 1/2 feet deep, put the body in and covered it with rocks and dirt, Nabors said. He said they camouflaged the grave with the trunk of a fallen tree and used branches to erase their footprints.

The four men then drove home, Nabors said, stopping along the way to pick up breakfast at the drive-through window of a McDonald’s.

Nabors said that despite a vow of silence, he told a friend, Adam Houston, what had happened. On Oct. 11, police called him in and played a tape Houston had given them, Nabors said. He heard his own voice on the tape, describing what had happened. A short time later, Nabors led police to Araujo’s body.

The preliminary hearing, to determine whether there is adequate evidence to try the defendants, was held over until March 17.

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Times correspondent Chris O’Connell contributed to this report.