Courts

Jail informant finishes testimony in Rilya Wilson trial

 

Robin Lunceford, a convict who has spent half her life in prison, claims Geralyn Graham confessed to smothering the missing 4-year-old foster child.

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After four days on the witness stand, jailhouse informant Robin Lunceford finished her testimony Thursday as prosecutors in the Rilya Wilson murder trial played an excerpt from a television news interview.

“If you tell me you just robbed three banks, I’ll say, ‘OK, no problem. I won’t say a word,’” Lunceford told WFOR-CBS4 in 2005 in an interview played for jurors.

“But you tell me you killed a baby, then if that makes me a snitch, I’m going to snitch proud. She smothered that baby.”

The state’s star witness, Lunceford had told jurors that Rilya’s caretaker, Geralyn Graham, confessed that she hated the child because of her unruly behavior, and that she smothered the 4-year-old with a pillowcase, burying her near a body of water in South Miami-Dade.

Graham, 66, is accused of kidnapping, abusing and murder Rilya.

Prosecutors believe Graham killed the foster child sometime about Christmas 2000, although state child welfare workers did not discover Rilya was missing until April 2002.

Rilya’s body was never found, and without a direct confession or eyewitnesses to the murder, Lunceford’s testimony was key for the state’s circumstantial case.

Lunceford, a longtime convicted felon with a sizeable rap sheet, first took the stand Dec. 19 and 20, and resumed Wednesday after the trial took an extended holiday break.

Prosecutors again questioned Lunceford, 50, after defense attorney Michael Matters — in often testy verbal sparring — sought to portraying her as a “snitch” willing to concoct a story simply to get a better plea deal.

On Thursday, Lunceford spoke about how other inmates and corrections officers, some whom cozied up to Graham, constantly harassed her after she came forward to cooperate with police.

Lunceford also talked about obtaining a photo of Rilya and affixing it to her prison ID, an act that drew blowback from the fellow inmates.

“I finally said, f**k everybody and I put her picture on my tab and if they don’t like it they can kick my ass,” Lunceford said. “I am going to get on this stand.”

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