The death penalty trial of Waylon Holsenbeck continued Wednesday with grisly testimony from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation medical examiner who inspected Mary Hancock’s body after she was murdered in late June 2004.

Dr. Anthony Clark, the GBI’s Southwestern Regional Crime Lab medical inspector, testified that Mrs. Hancock was likely killed by blunt force trauma to the head.

“The massive injuries suggest a tremendous amount of force,” Clark told the jury. “A heavy object was used two or three times to the left side of (Hancock’s) head.”

Clark said that Mrs. Hancock suffered bruises to her arms, legs and chest, that there was major fracturing to the top left side of her head and that a bone in her neck had been broken, apparently before she died, suggesting that Mrs. Hancock had been possibly strangled at one point during her ordeal.

After Dr. Clark’s testimony, Tifton Judicial Circuit District Attorney Paul Bowden called several witnesses who testified to Holsenbeck’s alleged actions and whereabouts in the days following Mrs. Hancock’s murder.

Joyce McCranie, an acquaintance of Holsenbeck, testified that he showed up at her house in Florida June 27, 2004, driving what she remembered to be a gold Toyota Avalon, which he said belonged to his mother.

According to McCranie, the two had been friends for several years, and he had contacted her several times suggesting that he would travel to Florida to visit her.

She also testified that when he did arrive in June 2004, he had a bag full of diamond and emerald jewelry. He also allegedly had a pistol, which McCranie said he allowed her then-17-year-old daughter to shoot. She said that she took the pistol from him and hid it in a dresser drawer in her bedroom.

At one point in her testimony, McCranie said that she and Holsenbeck were driving in the Toyota Avalon when he turned to her and told her that he had killed someone and put them in the trunk of the car.

McCranie said that she asked him why he would say that, and he allegedly replied that he was joking — that he “wanted to see the expression on (her) face.”

At that point, McCranie testified, she asked an Okaloosa County sheriff’s deputy that she knew from her job at a convenience store to check into Holsenbeck.

After she asked the deputy to check into Holsenbeck, she testified, the accused man told her that he was wanted in Tift County in connection with the murder and that there was “nothing to it.”

In the early morning hours of July 5, 2004, McCranie said that she and Holsenbeck had a conversation in which he said that he thought she turned him in, and that he was going back to Tifton.

She said that he told her that “they would never take him alive” and that he “wasn’t going back to prison.”

“He said that he had stolen some checks from someone, and that he had done something really bad,” McCranie told the jury. “He said that he had killed someone, put them in the trunk and dumped them on Highway 41.”

He told her he loved her, she said, and that he was going to take her life and then his own. The gun that she had hidden in her drawer was lying on the bed next to him, she told the jury.

She then said that at that moment, as Holsenbeck was allegedly saying that he was going to kill her before committing suicide, the Okaloosa County sheriff’s deputy that she had talked to earlier knocked on her door wanting to take a written statement from her.

She testified that she did not immediately tell the deputy, Charlie Bozeman, that Holsenbeck was in the house.

Bozeman testified that, in the time between his initial conversation with McCranie about Holsenbeck and his arrival at her door on July 5, he ran the Toyota Avalon’s license tag and found that it and its driver were wanted in connection with a homicide.

He said that he went to McCranie’s home at about 2 a.m. July 5 to take a statement from her, and as he spoke to her, he received a call that Tift County officials wanted to talk to him.

Bozeman, then suspecting that Holsenbeck was in the home, asked McCranie if he was there, according to Bozeman’s testimony, and she responded that he was.

McCranie opened her bedroom door for the officer, Bozeman testified, and Holsenbeck was taken into custody. The gun and two rounds of ammunition were recovered from the room.

On cross examination of McCranie, Holsenbeck’s attorney, Lon Kemeness, asked why, given six days to get the gun out of the house, she did not.

Kemeness also questioned Bozeman on how Holsenbeck was taken into custody. Bozeman answered that Holsenbeck was arrested without incident.

The number of witnesses testifying for the state was brought to more than two dozen by the end of Wednesday’s proceedings. Asked by Chief Superior Court Judge Gary McCorvey whether he expected to be finished entering evidence by the end of proceedings today, Bowden responded that he did.

McCorvey also denied a state motion to take the jury out of the courtroom to the wooded area where Mary Hancock’s body was found. The judge said that he didn’t feel that it was necessary, given the logistical concerns with moving the proceedings to the area and the fact that extensive photographic evidence that depicted the scene was available.