Detective describes details in golf course slaying

For the third time in the past two months, Elka Fernandez entered the courtroom with a picture of her slain son, Jojo Brandstatt, emblazoned across her black T-shirt.

Surrounded by family, she watched from the front pew of the viewing gallery as three adults charged with murder in the death of her son shuffled to their seats for the third day of the preliminary hearing.

West Valley police detective David Greco was the sole witness of the day. From the stand he recited the details of his investigation and shed further light on what the moments before Brandstatt's death might have looked like.

Greco used a red marker to illustrate a map of the West Ridge Golf Course where he and three other detectives found Brandstatt dead on Feb. 5.

He circled the place in the fence where a hole had been cut; marked the footprints depressed in mud and snow that led up a hill by the ninth hole, and put an arrow by the 50- to 75-foot trail of blood that seeped from the victim's body.

Jeremiah H. Williamson, 28, Shardise O. Malaga, 19, and Spencer Isaiah Cater, 18, are each charged with murder, aggravated kidnapping and aggravated robbery. A 14-year-old, described as the ringleader of the quad, is currently in juvenile court. There is a chance he will be tried as an adult in the future.

Greco told the court that Malaga began to cry during her interview and told him she was "under a lot of pressure." She told him that Cater taunted the 14-year-old boy and told him to kill Brandstatt.

"You won't get caught. I'll take everything," Cater supposedly told him.

Under cross-examination, defense attorneys for the three defendants attempted to shuck culpability from their clients.

Brennon Fueling, one of the defense attorneys for Williamson, suggested that his client's admission of involvement, made in an interview with detectives after he was apprehended in February, was made under duress.

"He describes things the way you and detective Marks (another detective involved in the case) had already described it to him," Fueling told Greco. "He's telling the story just as you guys have asked for it."

Meanwhile, David Shapiro, defense attorney for Malaga, asked Greco to verify that his report suggests Malaga tried to convince the quad to release Brandstatt and, when that did not work, to return to the golf course after he was shot.