This past December, the body of Matthew Kelly was found in the bed of a pickup, hours after he’d been killed at a rural farm home near Ark City. Four people were soon in custody in connection.
Three months later, 37-year-old Lisa Wise, Kelly’s sister, and 25-year-old Amber Orr, are free, their bonds significantly reduced after pleading to their roles in Kelly’s death.
In February, Wise pleaded no contest to aggravated battery, and was convicted of arranging for her brother to be beaten up. Orr pleaded no contest for assisting in helping to dispose of Kelly’s body.
They’ll be sentenced April 21 along with Dylan Weaver, who pleaded guilty to a charge of second-degree murder.
Now the state’s focus is squarely on first-degree murder defendant Justin Pierce, 25, who they say pulled the trigger to fire the shot that killed Kelly. He entered a not guilty plea via Zoom Friday before Cowley County Judge Christopher Smith, meaning the case appears headed for a jury trial.
No date for that trial has been set.
WEAVER TAKES THE STAND IN PIERCE PRELIM
Dylan Weaver, 31, entered his plea the morning of Feb. 25 and by the afternoon was on the stand to testify against Pierce at a preliminary hearing.
“He’s a f**king coward,” Weaver said as he looked toward Pierce during the hearing at the Cowley County Courthouse in Winfield.
Asked under oath why he chose to enter a plea and testify against Pierce, Weaver was remorseful.
“It’s the right thing to do,” he said. “We destroyed a family. I’m doing what’s right. I’m doing what I gotta do. We killed a man.”
Late on Dec. 13, it was Weaver who picked up Kelly at the Cowley County Jail in Winfield. He’d been arrested after damaging his girlfriend’s vehicle.
On the way to Wise’s home on 302nd Rd., the two men were joined by Pierce, who’d asked Weaver to pick him up on the way.
Weaver told the court that Pierce and Kelly, 34, seemed to get along and were talking as Weaver drove them all in his truck. They stopped at a convenience store for meth, but the dealer never showed.
A short time later, the three men arrived at Wise’s home. Weaver said Kelly was very upset he’d been arrested and almost immediately began yelling at his girlfriend, Candy Williams, who lived with Kelly and Wise at the house.
During court proceedings, Deputy County Attorney Christian Fazel read a narrative of events that stated Wise had contacted Pierce and told him to beat up Kelly, but not kill him. Williams told NewsCow, in a lengthy in-person interview, that Kelly had repeatedly accused Wise, his sister, of stealing money from their father.
The tension had brought authorities to Wise’s house on Dec. 1 in response to an argument between Wise and Kelly. Wise is said to have wanted Kelly evicted from her house and beaten up, too. Kelly believed people conspired to have him arrested.
Williams said she had her boyfriend arrested in hopes of getting hostilities to cool.
Weaver also testified in regard to property that Pierce and Weaver had stored at Wise’s house. Kelly knew the property, a truck and trailer out of Cedar Vale, was stolen.
Kelly was said to have threatened to turn Pierce and Weaver into authorities. The truck and trailer were taken to a remote location to be burned and Weaver testified Pierce didn’t like the idea Kelly might turn him in.
“A rat deserves to die,” Weaver said, recounting what Pierce had said about Kelly.
Things appeared to come to a head late Dec. 13 and into Dec. 14 of last year.
As Kelly returned from jail and yelled at Williams, Wise and Pierce are said to have been outside the truck. Weaver said Wise told Pierce that Kelly needed to be taught a lesson. Williams and Wise got ready to leave together.
An affidavit shows Wise is said to have told Pierce that Kelly “needed his ass whooped, but don’t kill him.”
Weaver said that even though Wise had said Kelly needed to be beaten up, it wasn’t something he was determined to do. He couldn’t say whether Pierce was intent on roughing up Kelly.
But, after the women left, a violent altercation took place during which Kelly was beaten, stabbed and shot multiple times. Weaver said Pierce fired a fatal shot at Kelly from close range with a shotgun he always kept with him that he nicknamed “baby girl.”
WHAT HAPPENED THAT NIGHT?
Evidence in the case points to Pierce as the person who fired the shot that killed Matt Kelly.
But as his preliminary hearing proceeded last month, Pierce’s attorney, Forrest Lowry asked Dylan Weaver about the details of what happened as the three men were involved in an altercation. The exchange between Lowry and Weaver was contentious at times.
Weaver said the men were left alone in front of the house on 302nd Rd. The altercation began, he said, when Matt Kelly reached into his waistband for something. Weaver said he thought it could’ve been a gun. There’s so far been no evidence to support the notion Kelly had a gun with him.
Weaver said Pierce’s “eyes got big” when he saw Kelly reach into his pants. He implied that Pierce’s initial involvement in the altercation was to come to the aid of Weaver.
Kelly got the upperhand on Weaver, who told investigators, and repeated on the stand, that Pierce came to his rescue.
“I believe Justin saved my life,” Weaver told the court. “(Kelly) Probably woulda choked me to death.”
Pierce, Weaver testified, came to Weaver’s aid by stabbing Kelly in the leg with a pocket knife. Weaver then ran to the porch and grabbed an extension court and wrapped it around Kelly’s neck to subdue him.
The men beat Kelly and he was shot twice with a .22. In his plea agreement, Weaver admitted to kicking Kelly in the face and kicking him so many times his foot began to hurt.
Pierce is then accused of retrieving another firearm, a shotgun, and killing Kelly. Judge Smith rule evidence is sufficient for Pierce to stand trial for premeditated first-degree murder.
Weaver also admitted to initially telling investigators that Kelly had tried to stab him. He told the court that he lied about that for Pierce’s sake.
“Tried to help him out,” Weaver said.
Authorities were also initially told that it was Weaver who had been shot. That wasn’t true either.
Asked under oath if he thought Kelly deserved to die, Weaver quickly replied, “absolutely not.”
THE AFTERMATH
Weaver said Pierce immediately became focused on disposing of Kelly’s body. Pierce ordered Weaver to help or Pierce would kill “my mom, my niece and my family.”
Weaver also told the court that Pierce held him at gunpoint and ordered him to help with the body. So Weaver hooked up a trailer to his pickup and loaded Matt Kelly’s body onto it.
Pierce then told Weaver to retrieve a camera from the window of the farmhouse. Weaver did that. That video, which was obstructed in part by curtains in the home, was played in court.
Under cross examination, Lowry, the defense attorney, pressed Weaver as to why he hadn’t tried to get the shotgun from Pierce when he had opportunities. Maybe the gun was out of arm’s reach and Weaver could’ve used it to be free of Pierce’s orders, Lowry said.
Weaver appeared to become irritated by the question and began to ask Lowry questions. He asked the defense attorney if he’d ever been in such a situation. Judge Smith admonished Weaver and told him he was not allowed to ask questions of the defense attorney.
After an initial attempt to hide Kelly’s body, Weaver parted ways with Pierce and headed back to Winfield. Weaver testified that he knew he’d eventually be arrested. So, he intended to visit people he knew.
The shotgun had been left with him, so he ditched it inside a barbecue grill at a home in Winfield. He was arrested later on Dec. 14. The camera from the crime scene was located in his truck, which was impounded.
ANOTHER DEMAND FOR HELP
As Weaver prepared to leave, Pierce contacted Amber Orr and asked her to meet him at the house on 302nd Rd. Orr testified at his preliminary hearing.
She said she had a scanner app on her phone and heard police were already at Wise’s house. Orr said she “wasn’t about to show up where cops are looking,” and instead met Pierce at another location in the area of Geuda Springs in Sumner County.
Orr said when she met Pierce he made the gravity of the situation clear.
“This is a serious matter, I will kill you,” Orr said Pierce told her.
Weaver was there, too, and just about to leave.
“They were both covered in blood,” Orr said of the two men. “Shooken up.”
Kelly’s body was already wrapped in a tarp. Orr helped Pierce load it in her S10 pickup truck. By then Weaver was headed back to Winfield.
The pair headed toward Oxford where authorities said Orr’s family had property where they had planned to dispose of Kelly. They never made it there. Court records show the S10 got a flat. Orr testified she and Pierce stayed at an abandoned farm house for a time.
Cowley County Sheriff’s investigators located the S10 and placed Orr and Pierce under arrest.
Orr said she’d been feeling the residual effects of being high on meth. She’d known Pierce and Weaver for three or four months when this incident occurred.
Wise was not called to testify in the preliminary hearing. Neither was Williams.