LEAGUE CITY — A woman accused of killing her mother testified Friday she was “too much of a coward” to stop her boyfriend from kneeling on her mom’s chest and strangling her.
Erin Ashlyn Moffatt, 20, took the stand in her murder trial and recanted her earlier confession to police that she strangled Jana S. Moffatt, 47, in her League City trailer Sept. 2, 2008.
Moffatt and her boyfriend, Corey Michael Lewis, 23, both admitted to disposing of her mother’s body in a Brazoria County oil field.
When Moffatt was arrested on a murder charge in Lafayette, La., she testified she was working as a prostitute, high on drugs, off her bipolar medications and hadn’t slept for four days when she made her confession.
She also testified her confession was influenced by what Lewis told her she did.
Moffatt told a jury in Galveston’s 405th District Court that she found Lewis kneeling on her mother’s chest and choking her.
“I was too much of a coward, and I didn’t help her,” Moffatt testified. “He ruined my whole life, my mom’s life.”
Boyfriend Refuses To Testify
Moffatt’s defense team of Lynette Briggs and G. Bryon Fulk called Lewis to the stand, but he invoked his right not to incriminate himself and declined to testify.
Erin Moffatt testified that Lewis threatened to kill her if she couldn’t keep quiet.
After driving Lewis to Brazoria County with her mother’s body wrapped in a rug, Moffatt looked to buy drugs.
When Moffatt returned from the dumping grounds, all she wanted to do was snort cocaine, she testified.
“I called my drug dealer and told him I was on my way to buy dope,” Moffatt testified.
“As soon as I walked in the door, I called him.”
Prosecutor Bill Reed questioned Moffatt, pointing out her many lies to police.
“Isn’t it true that the reason you did all this buffet of drugs is you killed your mother and you couldn’t deal with it?” Reed asked.
Moffatt denied the allegation.
Moffatt Hit Mom At 15
Moffatt testified that when she was 15, she was high on methamphetamines, kicked in her mother’s apartment door and hit her.
She repeatedly testified she didn’t kill her mother.
Two defense witnesses testified about their jailhouse interactions with Lewis.
James Anthony Flores, 24, Erin Moffatt’s former boyfriend, testified he saw Moffatt in “cat fights” with her mother. But Flores also testified he heard Lewis say “he’d gotten away with murder.”
Lewis has not been charged in Moffatt’s death.
He pleaded guilty to tampering with physical evidence, stemming from dumping the body, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
The defense also called Robert Wayne Jones, 47, who testified he didn’t know Erin Moffatt but spoke to Lewis in the Galveston County Jail.
‘I Shook Her Till She Didn’t Move’
“It sickened me and p----d me off with what he told me he had done, and that somebody else was being blamed for it,” Jones said. “He told me she was a little bitty woman, and ‘I just shook her till she didn’t move anymore.’”
Jones testified he unsuccessfully attempted to barter the information with the district attorney in exchange for a lesser sentence on his aggravated robbery charge.
Jones also testified Lewis told him about taking a body and dumping it in the woods. Lewis never implicated his girlfriend, Jones testified.
The defense is expected to rest its case Monday with its final witness, a psychologist who is expected to testify to Erin Moffatt’s mental state.
