CHARLOTTE N.C. (Court TV)— Which side in the Rae Carruth capital murder trial is helped by the startling testimony of triggerman Van Brett Watkins?

Van Brett Watkins

Court observers were scratching their heads Wednesday evening as Watkins completed his first full day of testimony. The man who admits murdering Carruth's pregnant girlfriend said the former NFL player masterminded the crime, a seeming win for the prosecution, but he went on to contradict key elements in the state's case, bolstering the defense.

Add the fact that Watkins is a mentally ill career criminal who was defiant and sometimes combative on the stand, and his testimony becomes more of a wild card.

Carruth's attorney, David Rudolf, took a big risk calling Watkins, who admits pumping four bullets into Cherica Adams, a 24-year-old pregnant with Carruth's baby. Watkins cut a plea bargain with prosecutors to avoid the death penalty in exchange for testifying that the wide receiver paid him to kill Adams.

But the prosecution never called Watkins, perhaps because of shocking claims which surfaced just before the trial started. A corrections officer claimed that before Watkins struck his deal with the state, he confessed a different version of the crime, saying Adams was killed in a botched drug deal and Carruth was innocent. Rudolf was determined to have this alleged confession heard by the jury, and decided to put Watkins on the stand.

After a morning of grilling Watkins about his psychiatric records and long rap sheet, Rudolf turned to what the defense sees as incriminating behavior by Watkins after his arrest. The defense attorney read Watkins the handwritten report of Sgt. Shirley Riddle, a corrections officer in the county jail where Watkins was held after his November 1999 arrest.

In the report, Riddle claims Watkins told her that Carruth reneged on financing a drug deal between Watkins and co-defendant Michael Kennedy. According to the jail guard, Watkins said he was looking for Carruth when he encountered Adams in her car and asked her where Carruth was. When Adams made an obscene gesture instead of answering, Riddle claims Watkins told her he "lost it" and opened fire on her car.

On the stand Wednesday afternoon, Watkins denied making the statements. He disparaged Riddle as an "attention seeker" who "came to my cell time after time to be 'the National Enquirer wants to know.'" He said she buddied up to all high-profile inmates and had manufactured the confession.

When Rudolf implied that Riddle soon would be testifying before the jurors, Watkins turned toward the panel and said, "People of the jury, if Sgt. Riddle comes in here and tells you that lie, don't pay no attention to it. Don't let it get in the way of the fact of what happened."

This was not the only time Watkins spoke directly to jurors. Earlier in the day, he tried to explain away the numerous victims of his crimes to the panel. He swiveled toward them and said, "Everybody I came in contact with had the same lifestyle as I was in. They wasn't ordinary, working people like you all. They was from the jungle. So if you swing in the jungle, you're gonna get hurt."

The panel seemed intimidated by Watkins, who was surrounded by three deputies, and individual jurors avoided eye contact with him.

Watkins also denied a report that he was overhead trying to get a message from jail to another key prosecution witness, Carruth's former girlfriend, Candace Smith. While Smith testified during the prosecution's case that Carruth admitted plotting the murder, the defense has tried to suggest that Smith had ulterior motives and may have had some relationship with Watkins.

But Watkins denied ever trying to contact her from jail, saying, "As I told you before, I don't know who Candace is."

Rudolf was unrelenting in his questioning of Watkins, suggesting repeatedly that the triggerman tailored his story to the police theory of the crime to save his skin. The defense attorney noted that only 18 minutes of Watkins' 10-hour interview with police was recorded. As the lawyer did previously with prosecution witnesses, Rudolf implied the police had provided information to the witness during the unrecorded portions of the interview.

Watkins, however, told the jury that during those 10 hours he refused to answer questions at all. He said that he did not decide to "come clean" about the shooting until during a break in the interrogation when he called his sister. She convinced him to cooperate, he said.

But Rudolf pointed out that Watkins had not really "come clean" until months later when he secured a plea agreement. Why couldn't Watkins just tell the truth with out a deal? Rudolf pressed.

"Because my name is Watkins, not Kennedy," Watkins replied, referring to his co-defendant, who surprised the court by testifying for the prosecution without a plea deal.

There were fireworks between Watkins and Rudolf throughout the testimony. Several times, Watkins implied that Rudolf was failing Carruth by not working out his own plea deal.

"You got a sweet deal without (prosecutors) asking you a single question?" Rudolf asked incredulously.

"You shoulda took one," Watkins spat back.

The prosecutors were notably silent during the direct examination, never objecting to Rudolf's argumentative tone or the witness's long-winded answers.

Prosecutor David Graham did begin a friendly cross-examination late in the afternoon, managing to score—and lose—a few points before the day was over.

Graham guided Watkins through a series of questions concerning how Carruth first approached him about harming Adams. Watkins testified that, after he performed a handyman job for Carruth, the football player summoned him to a meeting where he told him about Adams.

"He wanted her beat up and put in the hospital because she was not only pregnant but she was flaunting the fact she was pregnant by a football player," said Watkins.

He said Carruth planned to pay him $3,000 for causing a miscarriage and another $3,000 if he killed Adams.

But when Watkins recounted a specific meeting with Carruth to finalize the plans, the prosecution's case began to shake. Michael Kennedy testified previously that he drove Carruth, Watkins and his friend and co-defendant Stanley Abraham from a Charlotte waffle house to Adams' apartment complex. At the complex, Kennedy told jurors, Carruth gave Watkins instructions for beating up someone identified only as "he." Kennedy said he later concluded the men were discussing Adams.

But Watkins gave a significantly different account of the apartment complex visit. He said there were six people in the car, not four. He recalled an eight-year-old boy, possibly Kennedy's son, and one of Carruth's teammates, Hannibal Navies, also being along for the ride. Navies already testified for the defense that he had nothing to do with the crime and was widely perceived as a very credible witness.

Watkins also contradicted Kennedy with respect to Abraham's role in the murder. Kennedy said his childhood friend did not know the drive-by shooting was planned until minutes before it happened and pleaded to be let out of the car. But Watkins testified Wednesday that Abraham was a willing participant who said of Adams after the shooting, "I hope that bitch is brain dead."

Other key points in testimony Wednesday: