51ºÚÁÏ

ST. LOUIS — The star witness in Lamar Johnson’s murder trial nearly 30 years ago told the 22nd Judicial Court on Monday that he felt pressured by police to identify a suspect — or police would possibly implicate him in the crime.

Greg Elking testified his identification of Lamar Johnson in Johnson’s 1995 trial was coerced by detectives who were aggressive and bullied him.

Monday was the first day of a hearing expected to last all week after the 51ºÚÁÏ Circuit Attorney filed a motion to overturn Johnson’s murder conviction under a new state law his case inspired.

A dangerous criminal needed to get off the streets. That’s what police told Elking, he testified. They put him in a room with the victim’s grieving family. They told him he knew who shot Marcus Boyd, and he needed to stop being scared and identify a suspect, he said.

Elking testified that he still couldn’t honestly choose a suspect out of a lineup and that 51ºÚÁÏ police Detective Joe Nickerson, who led the murder investigation, told him of Johnson’s position in the lineup, Elking testified. Nickerson has refuted these claims.

“I wanted to help. I just seen a guy get murdered. It was a friend of mind. Law enforcement was wanting me to help. I trusted them. I trusted Joe Nickerson. I trusted everybody down there at that point that was trying to solve that murder,� Elking testified.

“I hate it, and I’ve been living with it for 30, 25, 28 years. I just wish I could change time,� he said.

For his cooperation in the prosecution, Elking received about $250 and moved from south 51ºÚÁÏ to South County with the assistance of the Circuit Attorney’s Office. At the time, Elking was broke and also struggling with drugs, he testified. The reason he was in Marcus Boyd’s house was to purchase crack from Boyd.

Following the trial, Elking got divorced and continued to struggle with drugs and his mental health. Later, he was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison for bank robbery.

Nickerson is now a detective with 51ºÚÁÏ County.

Elking will be cross-examined by prosecutors from the Missouri attorney general’s office starting Tuesday morning.

The man who the Circuit Attorney’s Office alleged since 2019 was the second gunman, James Howard, confessed to murder on the stand Monday afternoon.

Howard testified that Johnson had nothing to do with the murder and that he and another man, Phillip Campbell, gunned down Boyd the night of Oct. 30, 1994.

When asked by the state prosecutors about why he didn’t come forward with information about Boyd’s murder after Johnson was arrested, he said he didn’t think Johnson would ever get convicted because he had “nothing to do with it.�

Campbell sent a letter to Johnson in 1995 indicating that he and Howard had murdered Boyd, according to Johnson’s defense. Campbell was convicted in Boyd’s killing, as well. He is now deceased.

Years after Johnson was convicted, Howard was convicted for a different murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Prosecutors from the attorney general’s office questioned Howard on the total time he would be in prison. It added up to 345 years, he said, and that no one is offering him anything to confess.

Howard described on the stand why he and Campbell set out to kill Boyd. According to Howard, Boyd had disrespected Howard’s partner, Sirone Spates, aka Puffy. Puffy and Boyd worked together as drug dealers.

The plan wasn’t to kill Boyd, who lived down street, just rob him, Howard testified. But when Boyd resisted, both Howard and Campbell fired shots at him on his front porch, as Elking watched. They didn’t shoot Elking, he said, because they had on ski masks and believed they weren’t recognizable.

The state prosecutor questioned Howard about the discrepancies in what he and Campbell did before and after the murder, as described in affidavits Howard signed in 2002, 2005 and 2009.

�What I can for sure tell you is that I shot him and I know what happened with that,� Howard testified.

“The very hard stuff I can recall for you, but the small exact to the details — I can’t give you that.�

Assistant Attorney General Miranda Loesch asked Howard on the stand, “You would have signed anything put in front of you correct?�

“Yeah, if it were to help Lamar out because I know he didn’t commit this crime,� Howard said.