WESTON — A Lewis County sheriffs corporal investigating the disappearance of 3-year-old Aliayah Lunsford says he evaluated and debunked a 2016 tip that a motorcycle gang exchanged drugs for the toddler.
The child’s mother, Lena Lunsford, is standing trial for murder this week though Aliayah has been missing since 2011. Without a victim’s body, defense attorneys are expected to explore the possibility that members of the Pagan’s motorcycle gang played a role.
That theory aims to cast doubt on the prosecution’s case that Lunsford fatally struck her youngest daughter in the head with a wooden bed slat on Sept. 23, 2011, and dumped the body in the woods the next morning. One of Aliayah’s older sisters — a 15-year-old identified as DC who was age 9 at the time of the vanishing — testified she witnessed the lethal blow, followed by their mother carrying Aliayah’s body in a basket into the woods.
Cpl. Elijah Carpenter of the Lewis County Sheriffs Department was on the case when DC came forward in 2016 with that story she had been withholding for five years. DC’s statement, and one from another sister identified as KC, refocused a case that had gone cold despite efforts of state police, FBI and Homeland Security.
Combing through hundreds of leads — including a series of so-called psychics claiming to possess information — Carpenter became intrigued by one in particular in July 2016. A tip came from a Harrison County lawman who said two ex-members of the Pagan motorcycle gang possessed information about Aliayah being sold into human trafficking in exchange for a pound of heroin.
Upon receiving denials from Brian Mitchell and James Claypool, both of whom reportedly left the Pagans in 2009, Carpenter said he dismissed the theory.
When prosecutors called Mitchell and Claypool to the stand Thursday, both emphatically denied ever hearing of the gang’s involvement with Aliayah.
“Completely false,” Mitchell said.
“Ridiculous,” added Claypool, who recently removed himself from witness protection after turning state’s evidence against the Pagans in a previous criminal case.
Both men could be recalled to testify once the defense begins presenting its case.
As for whether Lena Lunsford will testify in her own defense? The 35-year-old woman’s attorney Tom Dyer told MetroNews “it’s doubtful,” though he said the strategy could hinge on the upcoming testimony from KC.
Lunsford claims she discovered Aliayah missing from her bed on the morning of Sept. 24, 2011, and soon joined her daughters DC and KC in driving around the neighborhood.
However, six of the Lunsfords’ adjacent neighbors on Dennison Street and Armory Road in Bendale testified they never heard the defendant searching for Aliayah that morning.
Lunsford’s waited several hours before calling 911, and video footage taken from surrounding areas shows her van in places that contradict her timeline of searching for Aliayah.
Aliayah’s siblings, DC and KC, separately led investigators to the same isolated spot near Vadis, claiming that’s where their mother took the body out of sight into the woods. However, cadaver dogs have never turned up any remains.
“Other than the testimony of the daughters, what do we have?” Dyer ask Carpenter during cross-examination Thursday. “Other than the memories — the story that’s been related by the daughters — we have no evidence of that, right?”
When DC first came forward with her statement, KC initially was unwilling to corroborate. Carpenter said DC and her adoptive father Craig Cole ultimately signed consent forms to electronically eavesdrop on a conversation in which DC urged KC to join her in telling police what they remembered.
The prosecution was poised to play a 30-minute segment of that recording Thursday before the defense objected and Judge Jacob E. Reger told jurors to disregard it.
