People Involved In Donald Palmer's Trial Share Their Memories - WTRF 7 News Sports Weather - Wheeling Steubenville

The double murder that sent Donald Palmer to Death Row played out 23 years ago.

But the details are still fresh in the minds of those who dealt with it, including the chief investigator on the case and a retired TV journalist who covered the trial, gavel to gavel.

It looked like a hit and run.

A man was lying dead in the middle of County Road 2.

Sheriff Fred Thompson was a deputy on the department at the time, and the chief investigator on the case.

He had just arrived on the scene, and cordoned off the area with crime scene tape.

He says a man walked up, stopped short of the tape, and said, "There's something you may need to know."

He said the man told him that there was a white pickup truck about a mile away, with the dead body of another man in the back.

7 News was on the scene, covering the gruesome discovery of the two men, each shot twice in the head, one lying in the back of his own truck.

"We saw where the truck was pulled up in the weeds, and there was kind of a mess there," recalls Allan Blanchard, retired videographer for 7 News. "Blood was running out of the truck down on the tailgate. It was nasty."

Fred Thompson says he worked that case eight days straight without much sleep.

On the eighth day he got a phone call from Donald Palmer.

He said Palmer told him he was in that area on the day of the murder doing some target shooting, but saw nothing.

The sheriff says there was a witness, a driver who'd been run off the road by the killers.

Thompson took that man to Palmer's apartment complex in Columbus, and at that moment, he says Palmer and Eddie Hill drove into the parking lot in a brown Dodge Charger with a red scarf tied around the mirror.

He says the witness looked up and said, "Here comes the Dodge Charger that ran me off the road! Here it comes now!"

Palmer confessed everything to Thompson, then later fought the charges, pleading not guilty.

The trial was an event, and Palmer was in the spotlight.

"He didn't give us any obscene gestures like some defendants do," recalled Blanchard. "He just sat there and he'd kind of turn around and look at us and just turn around. He didn't seem to be nervous at all."

Thompson remembers every detail of the case, and could have attended the execution, but chose not to.

"I felt that he deserved the death sentence," said Thompson. "But as far as going there to watch, I had no desire to do that."

"The death penalty's always sad," concluded Blanchard. "But at least the families now have closure."