During the murder of a Clayton

County man last year, one suspect confessed to the other that he was responsible

for killing Beverley Watson, according to the defense attorney representing

her husband, Jim, who stands accused of murdering her.

During pretrial motions Friday,

Lee Sexton said a suspect currently jailed for the November Clayton murder

told police in January that his codefendant admitted to killing Mrs. Watson.

But prosecutors say the murder

suspect's account is questionable because he didn't give police that information

in his first account of how the elderly man was killed. The suspect, James

Stewart Odom, told a detective with the Clayton County Police Department

that during the elderly man's killing the codefendant told him "Don't

worry, I've killed before. Do you remember the Riverdale police officer's

wife that was missing? I buried her in the woods."

Assistant District Attorney

Sheila Ross said Odom may be trying to secure a plea bargain with that

story to avoid murder charges. She also said Beverley Watson's remains

weren't buried when they were discovered in 1999, over two years after

her disappearance.

"We know it's unreliable,"

Ross said of the story, noting that in his first conversation with Clayton

police about the elderly man's murder, Odom didn't reveal that information.

Sexton also wants to introduce

evidence during the trial that the Fayette County Sheriff's Department

failed to properly follow up on a suspicious van that reportedly was in

the Watson's neighborhood the night Beverley Watson disappeared.

Sexton said the same night

Beverley Watson disappeared, the Watsons' next door neighbor reported

a suspicious van in the area. That neighbor followed the van and took

its license plate number, passing the information on to police, but the

lead wasn't checked out, Sexton claimed.

As it turns out, the license

plate came back registered to a man who was "apparently a serial

stalker," Sexton said. That man was finally arrested on peeping tom

charges at a later date, Sexton added.

Prosecutors alleged that it

was determined that information was not connected to Beverley Watson's

disappearance.

Detectives were supposedly

also told by two other witnesses that they had seen Beverley Watson "four

days after she allegedly disappeared," Sexton said.

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