GREELEY — An investigator who determined Ashley Fallis shot herself after a party in 2012 became the star witness for attorneys defending the man charged with her murder on Friday as the case ended its second week.
Dan Gilliam, a Larimer County crime scene investigator — and a prosecution witness — testified Friday in Tom Fallis’ murder trial that he spent hundreds of hours analyzing evidence and the scene in which Ashley Fallis died from a single gunshot wound to the head after a party at her home on Jan. 1, 2012. He spent all afternoon discussing his theory of suicide before the jury.
“What I’ve heard is that this was an act of rage, that Mr. Fallis was mad, that he killed his wife,” Gilliam said under cross-examination from defense attorney Iris Eytan, capping off the day.
“In the 35 years I’ve been in law enforcement, and 25 years in the lab, and going out to homicides and suicides, most people that shoot someone in an act of rage, they don’t stop with one shot.”
Gilliam was one of two witnesses who took the stand Friday in the prosecution’s case against Tom Fallis, who has been charged with second-degree murder. The case was originally ruled a suicide until a neighbor, and a Weld County Sheriff’s Office deputy, came out three years later stating they heard Fallis confess to shooting his wife. Police reopened the case. A Weld County grand jury indicted Fallis. Gilliam will not be the only investigator who testifies. The prosecution also will bring on a forensic expert next week, Jonathyn Priest, who offers a different view.
Gilliam said he was called to the scene the night of the shooting for a second opinion on some questionable blood spatter. After the autopsy, he, Evans police and attorneys huddled together to discuss the evidence, and all agreed the scene was consistent with suicide. He later did multiple tests that confirmed his theory, including the blood spatter on the wall and clothes, and bullet trajectory. The bullet entered Ashley’s head in a manner consistent with someone bringing a gun up to their temple and pulling the trigger, he said.
Under cross-examination, Eytan asked Gilliam to use attorney Dru Nielsen, the same height as Ashley Fallis, as a model to demonstrate the position Gilliam thought Fallis was in when she died.
Nielsen knelt down on her knees by a mock-up bed stand and jewelry cabinet in front of the jury, and demonstrated with a toy gun, under Gilliam’s direction, how he thought Fallis held the gun at her temple, based on the trajectory of the bullet out of the bedroom wall.
Defense attorneys have said Tom Fallis was across the room near a closet when the gun went off, and he went to his wife and cradled her head, applying pressure to her wounds.
Eytan also asked him to demonstrate how Fallis would have had to stand if he indeed pulled the trigger — showing an unnatural stance — all based on the location of the blood spatter and the spent cartridge and the trajectory of the bullet.
The trial will continue Monday morning.
