TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — Pictures of Paul Clifford’s burned remains, next to a burned truck were part of what jurors saw Wednesday in what’s become known as the Good Samaritan murder.
Jurors heard from the daughter of Paul Clifford, the man who went out on Christmas Eve to help a stranger who had car trouble. Now prosecutors say Jack Upchurch was that stranger and the man who killed Paul Clifford.
Paul Clifford’s widow, Christina Clifford sat in the audience and cried quietly as prosecutors put photos on a screen that showed a burned truck with her husband’s burned body beside it.
The judge in the case has ruled that we may not show witnesses like Clifford’s daughter Sabrina Vining as she testified.
She says she and her mother met Paul Clifford when he was their karate instructor. He was a big man—six foot six and a quarter. She described him as quiet and introspective.
Vining says on Christmas Eve almost two years ago, she heard a noise outside and saw a flashlight shine into her window. She heard a voice at the door, and her stepfather asked to borrow the keys to her truck so he could help someone whose car would not start.
Her truck includes software that lets her track the truck's location. She grew more and more concerned as it moved away from their home in Redington and moved towards Tucson using roads she knew her father would never have used.
She used the software to guide deputies to the truck. It was found without Paul Clifford, near Prince and Romero in Tucson.
In opening arguments prosecutors said Upchurch and two young companions had taken a different stolen truck to the Redington area and it broke down after they filled it with diesel fuel siphoned out of road equipment. Clifford’s body was found, shot and burned next to the burned and broken down truck.
A deputy testified about finding the burned truck and the remains later confirmed to be Paul Clifford.
Michael Harwin, Upchurch’s defense attorney, has worked to tell the jury about anyone else near the Clifford home—and anyone who might be perceived as a threat to the family.
He asked Sabrina Vining about a family acquaintance who made threatening comments to her mother. She says Paul Clifford told that man to leave the house. He left and did not come back but Sabrina Vining says at first she did think he might have been the man at the door the night Paul Clifford was killed. Harwin also questioned a deputy about a man he found sleeping by the side of the road in the Redington area.
