FORT WALTON BEACH — Assistant State Attorney Russ Edgar became “roast pig” in an unsophisticated jailhouse code prosecutors contend was created by disbarred attorney Harvey Tipler while plotting Edgar’s death.
The code was part of Tipler’s maneuvering to get the pieces in place to kill a determined prosecutor he had come to hate, Assistant State Attorney Bobby Elmore told jurors Tuesday as opening arguments were heard in Tipler’s trial on charges of solicitation of murder.
“A cold-blooded murder was supposed to happen right here in the Panhandle of Florida,” Elmore said. “Someone was supposed to come to Florida, stalk Assistant State Attorney Russ Edgar and mercilessly shoot him to death for nothing more than doing his job.”
The plot fell apart, at least in part, according to Elmore’s version of events, because Tipler trusted what his attorney described as a con man, a bully and a snitch.
The con man, Dion Lowe, took the stand Tuesday.
He testified that Tipler cried when describing the way he was being treated by Edgar as he pursued racketeering charges against him, and said any other prosecutor would treat him better.
Lowe said the tears indicated to him that Tipler was serious in saying he wanted Edgar dead.
“When you want to get out of jail that bad you go to any length,” he testified.
Tipler offered to pay Lowe $1,100 to find transportation to Altanta find a hit man there to kill Edgar using a long-range rifle and a silencer, Elmore told jurors.
Lowe testified he told Tipler he’d help him but didn’t mean it.
“I don’t even know nobody. I was just talking,” he said. “I was going to (use the money) to get a driver’s license so I could start providing for my family.”
Lowe again was alerted to how serious Tipler was, according to the prosecution, when Tipler called him about a month after Lowe had been released from jail.
In a tape of the phone call played for the jury, Tipler, speaking in the code he had devised, tells Lowe he had found cash to pay him to take care of the “project” they’d discussed and states, “I look forward to having some roast pig with barbeque sauce on it.”
According to Elmore’s opening argument, Lowe’s effort to take Tipler’s money was foiled because the snitch, former attorney R. Scott Whitehead, already had gone to authorities to sell out Tipler.
Lowe went to a pre-arranged meeting place in Destin to get cash for the “project” and was taken into custody.
He, Whitehead and Wallace Morris, the bully in the prosecution’s account, have taken plea deals to testify against Tipler.
The plea agreements, and the character of the men who took them, will be at the heart of attorney Clyde Taylor’s defense of Tipler.
“Who had motive to tell the truth and who had motive to spin a tale?” Taylor asked the jury.
Tipler, Taylor told jurors in his opening arguments, had been offered a plea deal of a three-year jail term with 12 years probation on the three counts of racketeering he was facing.
In light of the 90-year maximum sentence, Edgar had made a generous offer, Taylor said.
“He had an offer from Mr. Edgar, the very person he is accused of wanting to do away with,” Taylor said. “The golden egg has been laid in front of you by Mr. Edgar. Why would you kill the goose?”
The prosecution will continue its case today. The trial is expected to last all week.
Contact Daily News Staff Writer Tom McLaughlin at 850-315-4435 or tmclaughlin@nwfdailynews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TomMnwfdn.