The wife of

accused murderer Carl Millard Patton Jr. testified in court Thursday that

she witnessed her husband shoot Liddie Matthews Evans and Evans' boyfriend

Joe Cleveland at the Patton's home in DeKalb County over 25 years ago.

"He and

Joe were going back and forth with a gun, playing with it, cutting up,"

Norma J. Patton said of her husband. When the time was right, Carl Patton

shot Evans twice and then shot Cleveland once, she testified.

Mrs. Patton

said her husband wanted Evans and Cleveland dead because he thought Cleveland

had told Evans about another murder Cleveland and he had committed together.

Before Evans

and Cleveland were shot to death, Carl Patton Jr. and Cleveland about

a month prior had killed Patton's uncle Fred Wyatt and his wife at the

time, Betty Jo Ephlin, testified Maj. Bruce Jordan of the Fayette County

Sheriff's Department.

Because of

Mrs. Patton's testimony that the murder occurred in DeKalb County, State

Court Judge Fletcher Sams dismissed the murder charges here in Fayette

County. District Attorney Bill McBroom said murder warrants for Patton

had already been secured in DeKalb County due to the testimony of Mrs.

Patton.

Mrs. Patton

has received immunity from prosecution from Fayette, DeKalb and Clayton

counties for the murders even though she admitted to having helped plan

and execute the killings.

Family members

of the victims wept as they heard the details of the deaths from Mrs.

Patton in open court.

After the killings,

the Pattons dragged the bodies out of the house to a camper in the backyard,

Mrs. Patton said. Mrs. Patton said she then began cleaning up the blood

from the house.

Mrs. Patton

positively identified the photos of Cleveland and Evans as the two persons

killed by her husband in their home.

A sofa cushion

with a blood stain on it was confiscated a quarter-century ago from the

camper in the Pattons' residence, police said. Detectives used modern-day

DNA technology to use samples from DNA from Evans's daughter and her father

to create a composite sample of Liddie Evans's DNA, said Jordan, who led

the investigation.

The blood from

the sofa cushion matched the DNA compilation sample of Liddie Evans, Jordan

testified. Detectives were unable to get a DNA sample directly from Liddie

Evans's remains when her body was exhumed late last year, Jordan said.

Blood was also

found in the wooden floorboard of the camper, which had been painted over

to hide the blood, Jordan testified.

Norma Patton

testified that she helped dispose of Evans's body in the Flint River between

Clayton and Fayette counties and Cleveland's body at another location

in the river the day after the killings.

Carl Patton

Jr. and Norma Patton were originally arrested for the murders days after

Evans's and Ephlin's bodies were found in the Flint River. The arrest

was based on blood found in the trunk of the Pattons' vehicles, Jordan

testified.

Evans's body

was found just on the Fayette side of the Flint River, and Jordan ran

across the old case file when he was writing a true crime book on murders

in Fayette County.

Jordan decided

then that the physical evidence in the case if it could still be found

could help solve the murder. After some time, several pieces of physical

evidence were found that tied Carl Patton to the murder, Jordan testified.

Most of the

physical evidence was found in the evidence room of the Clayton County

Police Department, which is the agency that also investigated the murders

since two of the victims were found in Clayton's jurisdiction, Jordan

said.

The concrete

blocks chained to some of the murder victims and the sleeping bag Evans's

body was found in will also be used in the case, Jordan explained.

The Georgia

Bureau of Investigation's crime lab was also key in deciding to reanalyze

the evidence from the 25-year-old case, Jordan said.

It took the

GBI some time to find its original case file on the murders, so detectives

worked for about a month using information from newspaper accounts that

were published at the time, Jordan said.

Mrs. Patton

agreed to cooperate with authorities minutes after the sheriff's department

arrested her husband at their Locust Grove home almost two weeks ago,

Jordan said.

Another witness

who claimed to have known Carl Patton from a series of drug transactions

after the murders will testify that Carl Patton admitted to "killing

the people that were found in the river" but not his uncle, Fred

Wyatt, Jordan said.

Wyatt's death

was originally ruled an accident after his body was found in a car that

had been struck by a train. His remains were exhumed by the GBI a year

later and it was found that he actually died from a gunshot wound to the

head, Jordan said.

Norma Patton

testified that she heard her husband and others talk about how Wyatt died

and that her husband was familiar with the area where the vehicle was

struck by the train because Carl Patton had lived there for years.

Jordan also

spoke of several other witnesses who will help prove the murder case against

Carl Patton. One witness saw Carl Patton burn a sofa, a suitcase and other

items, Jordan said. Mrs. Patton testified that Carl Patton was worried

about physical evidence being found on them.

Although Liddie

Evans's mother Margie has died, she was interviewed by detectives before

her death, Jordan said. The victim's mother said at the time that her

daughter had told her Cleveland had murdered several people along with

Carl Patton.

Jordan said

he first ran across information on the case while doing research for his

book in 1997. He declined to act on his hunch then because he was busy

working on the Beverley Watson missing persons case that turned into a

homicide case.

Fayette County

Sheriff Randall Johnson, who was in his first year in office when Evans's

body turned up here in 1977, authorized reopening the case last year,

Jordan said.

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