A little Odessa girl who told investigators in 2019 that she’d been repeatedly raped by a family friend reported being sexually assaulted by the same man two years earlier, but authorities didn’t have enough evidence to make an arrest.
Tuesday was the second day in the trial of Gary Landreth, an Odessa man who is facing four counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child, one count each of sex abuse of child continuous, human trafficking and injury to a child.
Landreth was arrested in January 2019 after a 5-year-old girl told a forensic interviewer she was sexually abused by Landreth, a family friend, and a physical exam confirmed she’d been abused.
On Tuesday, Lt. Thomas Paz of the Ector County Sheriff’s Office told jurors that in 2017 the same little girl was brought to the sheriff’s office after telling someone Landreth had touched her inappropriately. The child was interviewed by a forensic interviewer at that time, as well, but the investigation stalled, Paz said.
The then-3-year-old girl did not say anything that justified a physical exam and interviewers weren’t convinced she knew the difference between the truth and a lie, Paz said. In addition, they believed she may have been coached as to what to say during the interview, he said.
Jurors were shown a video of that forensic interview. Early on in the interview and without prompting, the girl said, “Gary put his finger down there and he touched me. He needs to go to jail.”
The interviewer swiftly moved away from the topic in order to confirm the girl knew the difference between the truth and a lie.
The girl was able to properly identify balls, dogs, cats and other items in pictures that were shown to her, but when the interviewer would point to the picture and purposely misidentify the item, the girl was just as likely to say “right” as “wrong.”
Paz told Assistant District Attorney Kortney Williams that when he spoke to Shirley Harmon, the child’s mother, she told him Landreth hadn’t been around any of her children for months and she would no longer give him access to the children.
In hindsight, Paz said he should have investigated further and interviewed Harmon more in-depth.
Harmon was also arrested and indicted in 2019 after she told authorities she’d accepted $400 from Landgreth for access to her children. She was charged with abandonment/endangerment, continuous sexual assault of a child and human trafficking.
The 40-year-old pleaded guilty to the abandonment/endangerment charge and agreed to testify against Landreth in exchange for having the other two charges dismissed.
On Tuesday, Harmon told jurors she was a single mother of a five-month-old boy when she moved to Odessa in December 2009 to get to know her biological mother, who had lost custody of her and her siblings in the late 1980s. She met Landreth at church through her mother and he offered to watch her son while she worked.
Eventually, she moved in with Landreth and when she became pregnant by another man with her daughter in August 2013, Landreth agreed to continue to watch both children, Harmon said.
Harmon testified she never paid Landreth for rent and what money she earned while working 40-plus hours a week at Taco Bell went for food and her children’s other needs.
After awhile, Harmon said she moved in with a boyfriend and the children began splitting time between her mother and Landreth when she was at work.
She eventually had another son in September 2015, but Landreth didn’t watch him as much as the older two children, Harmon said.
Harmon told jurors she didn’t know many of the details of the 2017 investigation other than the fact she learned Landreth had been bathing the girl. She said she remembered telling Landreth her daughter was big enough to bathe herself and he should allow her to do so.
She admitted she allowed Landreth to continue watching the children after the investigation although her daughter would sometimes cry when she dropped them off and she’d told her on at least two occasions that he’d hurt her.
“I didn’t have anyone else to watch her and I had to work,” Harmon said.
Harmon gave contradictory testimony to Williams and defense attorney Michael McLeaish about the $400 she said she received from Landreth. She said the money was “just for the kids to go over there,” but she also said the money was so Landreth could have sex with her daughter.
Harmon’s former boyfriend Jonah Phillips, who didn’t father any of Harmon’s children, told jurors he rarely watched them because the older two had a “love/hate” relationship with him. He also said that at the time he was 600 pounds and struggling with mental health issues.
He didn’t interact much with Landreth, but he does remember Landreth once telling him he didn’t need a girlfriend because he had Harmon’s daughter.
Under cross-examination from McLeaish, Phillips denied applying a negative connotation to the quote only because Landreth was arrested. He said the oddness of the statement had always been in the “back of his head.”
The jurors also heard from two sexual assault nurse examiners and a licensed clinical social worker Tuesday.
The SANEs, Tela Whitley and Lisa Montoya, testified the injuries sustained by the child were among the worst they’ve ever seen, could not have been the result of childhood accidents and clearly were the result of repeated acts.
Whitley testified the child told her she’d told her mother Landreth had been giving her white medicine with his hand and his penis and her mother had replied, “He’s stupid.”
Kara Davis, the licensed clinical social worker, testified she worked with the child for 13 months following the arrests of her mother and Landreth.
Although she engaged in highly disturbing behavior during that time frame, she is now doing really well in the home of her adoptive parents, although she will likely suffer lifetime consequences as a result of the abuse, Davis said.
Forcing her to testify in a roomful of strangers would cause “severe regression,” Davis said.
The state rested their case without calling the girl to the stand.
The trial is expected to wrap up Wednesday.
Judge Denn Whalen of the 70th District Court is presiding over the trial.
