Vivid descriptions mark first day’s testimony in cabbie murder trial

During opening statements shortly after 2 p.m. Monday, the prosecution and defense teams painted outlines of the cases they will present to a 16-person jury (with four alternates) over the course of the projected week-long murder trial of Clay Marshall Curtis.  Curtis, now 63, is accused of premeditated, First-Degree Murder of off-duty Yellow Cab of the Shenandoah driver Simon Funk Jr. on December 9, 2014.

Accused murderer Clay Marshall Curtis

The prosecution’s version is of a clear-cut case, albeit based on circumstantial evidence, of premeditated murder that the defendant has allegedly confessed to multiple times.  The defense countered that the prosecution is presenting a case of premeditation without clear-cut motive, based on testimony from witnesses of questionable motive or memory – and that the sources of the two alleged Curtis confessions the prosecution will introduce have their own particular motivations to identify Clay Curtis as Funk’s murderer.

Yellow Cab driver Simon Funk, Jr. whose body was discovered in a remote area of Shenandoah Farms in the early-morning hours of Dec. 10, 2014. Courtesy Photos

Curtis is also accused of attempted Second-Degree Murder of Jeffery Sissler, who confronted a man he identified as Clay Marshall Curtis on the Shenandoah Farms property of Faye Curtis the night Funk disappeared.  Funk’s body was found on or near Curtis’s sister’s property later that night in the early-morning hours of December 10.

Sissler was one of two primary eye-witnesses to the events surrounding Funk’s disappearance and his body’s eventual discovery that the prosecution presented Monday afternoon and early evening.  The other was Carla Elliott, Simon Funk’s girlfriend at the time of his death.

Elliott and Sissler’s testimony bookended the prosecution’s case.

Elliott described meeting Curtis, whom she and Funk knew as Frederick Kramer, as part of her housekeeping job at the Front Royal Motel in August-September 2014.  She testified the couple befriended Kramer/Curtis receiving gifts totaling nearly $6,000 in return for rides in a car she said “Kramer” bought her ($3,000) and paid for repairs to ($2,100), as well as help in acquiring new living accommodations when he would move from one motel to another.

Sissler recounted being called by an alarmed Faye Curtis the night of Funk’s disappearance due to noises near her Shenandoah Farms residence at 716 Kildare Drive.  Sissler said he lived right across the street, catty-corner to Faye Curtis.  He testified after he blocked an unfamiliar and unoccupied van in Faye Curtis’s long, winding, inclined driveway with his own 2013 Nissan Extera SUV shortly after dark on December 9, 2014, he encountered 74-year-old Faye Curtis on her porch with a flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other.

Sissler later identified the defendant as the man he encountered coming out of the woods with a flashlight headed for the van he had blocked in near the bottom of Faye Curtis’s 150-foot driveway.  Sissler, who identified himself as a “trained martial artist”, aggressively encountered the man he identified as Clay Curtis upon his return to the abandoned van.

Despite the darkness, Sissler testified he recognized Clay Curtis when he approached the van that Curtis had entered on the driver’s side, because he had seen him two or three times previously when Faye Curtis’s brother was living with her earlier that year.  The commonwealth and defense agreed to stipulate that Clay Curtis had lived with his sister at 716 Kildare Drive in August of 2014.  Faye Curtis died at the age of 76 on April 26 of this year, 16 days after her brother’s trial was postponed for the first of two times this spring.

The defense described Sissler as an overly alarmed, if well-meaning neighbor of Faye Curtis, whose positive ID of Clay Curtis as the man encountered in rural, pitch darkness was questionable.  Defense attorney David Hensley queried Sissler on his inability to positively ID the van his encounter with the man coming out of the woods occurred in, while being so sure of the identity of the man himself.

“I’m 100-percent positive – I know that face; I’ll never forget that face,” Sissler testified of the encounter during which he said he feared for his life.

However, Hensley noted that despite his current positive ID of Curtis, upon encountering him in the van, Sissler had asked the man who he was.

Sissler countered that the man confirmed his identification, saying, “I’m Clay Curtis and I’ve come PAY my sister a visit – he emphasized ‘pay’,” Sissler testifed.

Sissler said he had reason to believe the man coming out of the woods was armed and his intention was “to get within arm’s reach of him.”  When he saw the man he identified as Curtis reach under the driver’s seat with both hands “I had serious fear for my life.  I reached in and grabbed him by the neck and said, ‘You better not be reaching for anything – there’s three of us here.’ ”

He explained those three were him, Clay Curtis and Faye Curtis, though he was trying to give the man in the driver’s seat a different idea.

“Okay, I’m leaving,” he said the man replied.

“I’ve you blocked in – you’re not going anywhere,” Sissler said he replied, having twice told Faye Curtis to call 911.  He then began walking up the driveway at a measured pace toward Faye Curtis’s house.  Three quarters up the long rural driveway he said he heard the van accelerate “right up behind me, very, very close.”  Sissler said he leapt between two pickup trucks parked in the driveway, barely avoiding being run down.

He said the van had to swerve to avoid hitting the parked trucks, hit a fire pit and went airborne, crashing into a tree; after which the driver fled on foot.

“You didn’t even know there was a dead body on the mountain,” Hensley said of Sissler’s confrontation with the van driver.

“I knew there was about to be,” Sissler replied.

Asked to explain his reply, Sissler said, “I knew why he was there – I had reason to believe why he was there.”

Romantic triangle?

Elliott said that when Funk came home shortly after 5 p.m. on December 9, he told her that “all of Frederick’s stuff” was on their porch.  She said she had been cleaning upstairs in her and Funk’s West Ninth Street rental house earlier when there had been loud knocking on the door that she had not answered.  They soon established contact with Curtis/Kramer, who asked for a ride “up Howellsville Road to his niece’s house” in Shenandoah Farms.

Elliott testified that she initially said she could give him a ride, but that Funk had countered that he would.  She testified the two men were going to drive to the hotel where Curtis had been staying but had been locked out of and forced to move from, in order to get more of his possessions.  She testified that she saw a pistol Curtis/Kramer had, that he explained he needed “for bear” up in the Farms.  Elliott said that she asked Curtis to put the gun in the back of the van because it was making Funk nervous – though the last part of that observation was excluded as hearsay on an objection from the defense during direct examination.

Elliott then described a series of phone calls to both Funk and Curtis/Kramer’s cell phones, initially asking Funk to bring cigarettes home with him.  After being unable to reach either phone for awhile, Elliott testified that despite the fact she had been drinking wine at home, she decided to drive up to where she believed the two men had gone to try to find them.  After turning at the store at the end of Howellsville and not finding them, she turned around to return to Front Royal.  She said she saw Sheriff’s Office vehicles parked in the store parking lot but did not stop because she had been drinking.

After returning to her and Funk’s Ninth Street home she said she got an answer “on Simon’s phone” but that it was Curtis/Kramer who answered.  Choking up and eventually sobbing with both hands to her face, Elliott testified she began yelling, “Let me talk to Simon! Let me talk to Simon!!” to which she said Curtis/Kramer replied, “Shut up, bitch.  He’s dead and I’m going to prison forever.”

The defense painted Elliott as a convicted felon, including crimes of “moral turpitude”, a drug addict and a sexual consort of Curtis’s.  Elliott admitted to having an issue with “self medication” with illegal drugs for years, adding that she has been clean for over two years now.

However, asked if she had sexual relations with Curtis, Elliott exclaimed, “He’s gay – absolutely NOT!!!”

And so it went on the first day of testimony in the First Degree Murder trial of Clay Marshall Curtis in the shooting death of 42-year-old Simon Funk, Jr.  Testimony indicated that Funk had been shot twice, once in the abdomen and once in the back of the head.

With an evidentiary issue encountered, Judge Athey adjourned the trial at 6:42 p.m. Monday. It will reconvene at 9 a.m. Tuesday in Warren County Circuit Court.