(Stillwater, Okla.) — A Cushing woman was murdered because the woman with whom she was living believed she was stealing from her and not paying for her methamphetamine, one of two Cushing men charged in the slaying testified Friday.
Amber Nicole “Nikki” Sporleder, 33, whose throat was cut, was identified by her tattoos that had been entered into a state crime bureau database, Payne County Sheriff’s Deputy Nick Myers told a judge during a preliminary hearing Friday.
“I knew she was going to be killed,” said murder co-defendant Justin Allen Kelley, 32, who testified Friday that he drove the victim to a location between Cushing and Yale where she was slain by his co-defendant, Denny Allen Sisney, 36, on Harmony Road north of Riverbend Road, early on the morning of May 24.
Two days before the preliminary hearing, Kelley had pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was given a 25-year prison term followed by probation for life, along with immunity from prosecution for other crimes — in exchange for his testimony against Sisney.
At the close of the preliminary hearing, Special District Judge Katherine Thomas ordered Sisney to stand trial on the first-degree murder charge and a count of conspiracy to commit murder added by prosecutor Kevin Etherington Friday. He remains jailed without bail pending his trial court arraignment on April 4.
The Cushing woman with whom the victim had been living, Laurie Darlene Bacon, 41, has not yet been charged in connection with the murder. Bacon gave “the green light” to killing Sporleder, Kelley testified Friday.
Two weeks ago, Bacon was sentenced to five years in prison followed by five years of probation for twice possessing a drug near Cushing High School in 2013.
Sporleder had moved in with Bacon four or five months before she was killed, Kelley testified.
“Three days to a week (before the murder), everything unfolded about her stealing stuff,” Kelley testified.
“She’d be at Laurie’s house when I’d come over,” testified Kelley, who said that he and Bacon had been trafficking methamphetamine for about a year together.
“If I moved, that’s what I was doing,” admitted Kelley, who had broken into Mac’s Jewelry in Cushing in 2012, for which he was ordered to pay $25,864 restitution, spend six months in jail and serve four and one-half years of probation.
“Nikki was stealing stuff from Laurie’s house. She wasn’t paying her for the dope she got off her,” which angered Bacon, Kelley testified.
Kelley, who said he didn’t have anything against Sporleder but wanted to kill her boyfriend, testified “I told her Laurie knew she was stealing her shit, the meth, the clothes, the jewelry.”
Kelley said that he was introduced six or seven months earlier to Sisney, who had a sexual relationship with Bacon, he testified.
The night of the slaying, Kelley, Sisney, Sporleder and her boyfriend were drinking at Bacon’s house — where they all used methamphetamine including Bacon, he testified.
While Sporleder and her boyfriend were in a bedroom, “Sisney said somebody needed to teach her a lesson,” which Kelley testified was “to take her out and kill her.”
“He (Sisney) said he would do it at Bacon’s. I was just told take them to the river. Sisney carried a knife constantly — it’s a camouflage lockblade.
“That’s the knife he had the night he committed murder. He was sitting in the room sharpening it. He sharpens his knife all the time,” Kelley testified.
“We left in Laurie’s truck after 3 or 4 a.m. We were going to take her to the river,” Kelley testified. Sporleder’s boyfriend — whom Kelley wanted to kill because he had once called the police on Kelley — disappeared before they could get him in the truck, Kelley said.
The murder victim was lured into the truck with the story that they were going fishing, Kelley testified. She was in the passenger seat of Bacon’s truck, with Kelley driving and Sisney in the back seat, he testified.
“We went down to the river. I headed south on Norfolk. I stopped and acted like the truck was stuck. I tried to get her out of the truck. She said she wasn’t pushing it,” Kelley testified.
Again later, “I stopped the truck. She said ‘I’ll get out and walk.’ Sisney got out behind her. I stayed in the truck. I heard them arguing. I turned the radio up. Nikki was screaming,” Kelley testified.
Sisney “had blue plastic gloves on, I guess to stop from leaving fingerprints. I got them from Bacon. He threw them out after we took off. He just pitched them to right of the road. I saw him throw the knife out,” Kelley testified.
“He told me to drive — that he’d killed her. I almost lost control of the vehicle. He said I was talking with a murderer, to drive. He had blood on his arms and shirt. It was smeared blood,” Kelley testified.
“We went to Laurie Bacon’s. He got in the shower, threw his clothes in a trash bag, told me to get rid of them,” which he later put on the side of a wash tub at his mother’s house, Kelley testified.
Before she was killed, “Nikki was texting the whole time. I was supposed to get the phone before we left the river. At the house, he (Sisney) asked me if I got the phone. I didn’t have the phone. He said ‘we’re screwed,"” Kelley testified.
Under cross-examination from Sisney’s court-appointed attorney, Peter Astor — who characterized Kelley as Bacon’s enforcer or muscle — Kelley admitted, “I made sure Laurie got paid.”
Kelley testified that “money, dope, rigs (needles and spoons) were kept in a safe” that Bacon moved around to different houses since “she got paranoid.”
“Pretty much wherever the safe was, that’s where I would stay,” Kelley testified. He said that he injected methamphetamine like most of the people he hung out with.
Kelley claimed he drank two fifths of whiskey before the killing. “When you’re on meth, you’re water-proof. I shot up at 1:30 a.m. or 2 a.m.” Kelley testified.
Pointing out that Kelley had made different statements to investigators, Astor said, “You have so many versions out there sir, Mr. Kelley. Can you see how there would be a problem telling which one is true?” to which Kelley said, “yes.”
Kelley testified that he was afraid of Sisney: “He had committed murder I and I was the only one who could put him at the scene of the crime.”
Deputy Myers had testified that at 6:50 a.m. on May 24, 2013, he was sent to Phillips and Harmony Road, one mile east of Norfolk Road where a woman’s body was lying on the west side of Harmony Road with a laceration to the neck.
Her shoes and cell phone were in the vicinity, he testified. Light blue gloves with a blood-like substance on them were in a ditch, he testified.
“I searched the system using tattoos I had seen,” on the victim’s body, the deputy testified. “I determined Amber Nicole Sporleder had similar tattoos,” he testified.
Payne County Sheriff R.B. Hauf testified that shortly after he was notified at 7 a.m. of a possible homicide, he asked the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation to assist in the case.
“OSBI asked we do a shoulder-to-shoulder search of the bar ditch to see if any evidence was in the grass,” which was about knee high, the sheriff testified.
“I found a camo-colored pocket knife with what appeared to be blood on it. The knife was straight west of where the body was,” in a pasture that he searched, the sheriff testified.
District Attorney Tom Lee is seeking the death penalty for Sisney, an ex-convict who has been held without bail since his arrest on the day of the slaying.
Sisney “maintained he had been drinking tequila the previous night, had passed out, and could not remember anything after that,” OSBI Agent Marty Wilson wrote in an affidavit.
At the time of his arrest in Sporleder’s slaying, Sisney was on 10 years’ probation for assault and battery on a police officer in Creek County in 2009.
Sisney served about five months of a one-year prison term for being a felon in possession of a .380 handgun in Tulsa County in 2011, DOC records show.
Sisney also served about four months of a one-year sentence for domestic assault and battery by strangulation in Creek County in 2007, DOC records show.
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