Land-Feud Murder Trial Ends First Day Of Testimony

(printed April 23, 2008)
By Lauren Grover
Telegraph Staff Writer
QUITMAN - The feud of two Winnsboro neighbors climaxed when they met on a dirt road between pastures in October 2006, rammed tractors and one shot the other to death, two Wood County investigators testified Tuesday in the murder trial of William Burnard Kear.
Judge Paul Banner presided over the trial's start Tuesday in the Judicial Center in Quitman where some 20 witnesses - including wives Debra Kear and Sue Johnson - were sworn in.
Kear, 64, shot and killed his neighbor, Norman Johnson, 63, with a .22-caliber revolver on the afternoon of Oct. 4, 2006, on Johnson's property near the 4000 block of North Farm Road 312, the prosecution and defense said.
The two men's land dispute escalated into a lawsuit they filed not long before the encounter. Kear was charged with murder on Oct. 5 and released on $25,000 bond that evening.
Kear is pleading not guilty by way of self-defense and claims Johnson sped at him, ramming his bigger tractor into Kear's before he shot Johnson, defense lawyer Clifford "Scrappy" Holmes said in his opening argument.
"Mr. Johnson yelled 'I'm going to take your (expletive) head off' and hit Mr. Kear's tractor with the blade of his bucket (loader)," Holmes said.
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