CHARLOTTE N.C. (Court TV)— Before he cut a deal with the prosecution, the man who killed Rae Carruth's pregnant girlfriend admitted the football player had nothing to do with her murder, a jail guard testified Friday morning.

Sgt. Shirley Riddle said triggerman Van Brett Watkins claimed he shot Cherica Adams in a rage after she made an obscene gesture at him — and suggested that her superiors tried to brush his alleged statements under the carpet.

"She flipped me off, and Sgt. Riddle, I just lost it. I just lost control and started shooting," Riddle quoted Watkins as telling her in December 1999, a month after the crime and nine months before he inked a deal with the state to testify against Carruth.

Riddle's testimony is the heart of the former Carolina Panther's defense. He is accused of contracting Watkins to murder Adams in a drive-by shooting. The defense maintains there was no murder-for-hire, but rather a clumsy and ultimately fatal drug deal in which Adams was an innocent bystander.

Carruth's attorney, David Rudolf, told jurors during opening statements that Watkins wanted the NFL player to finance a marijuana sale and, when Carruth reneged, Watkins and two other players in the drug deal, Michael Kennedy and Stanley Abraham, tried to track him down to demand the money. Instead, they found Adams in her car and Watkins killed her, Rudolf said.

Watkins rejected this account during two tumultuous days on the stand, actually turning to the jury and telling them to ignore Riddle's "lies" if she testified.

Riddle, a petite blond who took the stand under a defense subpoena, shook throughout her testimony. She acknowledged being very nervous, and spoke so softly that Rudolf, a bailiff and the court reporter had to ask her to raise her voice. Riddle admitted in her testimony that she didn't want to testify and did so only because she was under subpoena.

She recalled a December evening when Watkins insisted on talking to her in his cell phone.

"He said, 'Sgt. Riddle, I got to talk to you.' Mr. Watkins appeared upset. First, he said, 'I shot that girl,' and I said, Mr. Watkins you know you're not supposed to talk to me about this stuff,'" she said. Riddle told jurors she tried to dissuade him from talking further, offering to call for a chaplain or mental health officer, but he shook off those suggestions and continued talking.

"He said...'We'd lost track of Rae. We wanted to see which way he was headed.' And he said, 'I started waving my arms to get her to slow down. We were just going to ask her if she knew where Rae was going and she slowed down — I think she may have thought we wanted to pass her — and I was telling her to roll her window down, that I wanted to talk to her and when she saw who we were, she flipped me off,'" Riddle testified.

She said that after telling her how he "lost it" and shot her, he immediately blamed Carruth, saying, "It was Rae's fault, if he'd just have given us the money none of this would've happened."

Riddle said she was stunned by Watkins' confession and unclear about his motivation for telling her. Because of that, she said, she did not write a report about the incident.

"I thought he was trying out a defense on me. It was weird... and I didn't want to get involved in it," she said.

It was not the only time Riddle heard Watkins making potentially incriminating statements. On the day Watkins was charged with murder, Riddle said, he asked and she permitted him to make two phone calls. After the first, Watkins told her no one had picked up and he dialed another number, she said. During that second conversation, he asked someone to warn "Candace" not to talk to police. Candace Smith, a former girlfriend of Carruth and a key state witness, testified earlier in the trial that the football player confessed involvement in the murder.

"He told them he had tried to call Candace but she wasn't home and that he wanted them to get in touch with her and tell her to keep her mouth shut," she recalled. She said he went on to say that they should remind her "that if she cared anything at all about Michael [Kennedy], she'd keep her mouth shut."

Riddle recorded the events in an incident report, which she submitted to her captain. According to Riddle, the captain "got upset with me about it," asking her, "Do you know what that's going to do to your chances of becoming of a captain?"

"It made me very apprehensive about doing a report," she said.

Riddle also met with her commander, who urged her to keep quiet about the incident, she said.

"He said, 'No, don't turn that in. From all the phone calls that were made, I think this case is pretty much sewn up. I don't think we need to get involved in this,'" Riddle testified.

Upset about what she believed could be a cover-up, Riddle confided in her collegue, Sgt. Tom Stamps.

On cross-examination, prosecutor Gentry Caudill gently tried to get the soft-spoken woman to say that she didn't find Watkins credible. Caudill asked her about how seriously she took threats purportedly made by Watkins to commit suicide if Adams died. He also had her admit in front of the jury that she has been taking antidepressants and muscle relaxers since taking a medical leave of absence after an inmate assaulted her in April.

Stamps was also called to the stand, and testified that he acted with concern for Riddle when he decided to contact Rudolf about Watkins' alleged statements.

"She knew this information needed to come out, but if it came out she would be fired," he said. Fearing repercussions about going to anyone in corrections or in the police department, Riddle and Stamps decided that Stamps would talk to Rudolf, Stamps testified.

He did so when he saw the defense attorney in jail following a visit with Carruth, and told him he may have information that would be helpful to the former Carolina Panther's case, Stamps said.

But the sergeant told Rudolf that before he said anything, Rudolf would have to tell him something about their theory of the crime. When Rudolf confirmed his suspicions that the incident was believed to be drug-related, Stamps told him about Watkins' statements.

In a more aggressive tone than he took with Riddle, Caudill grilled Stamps about his fear of going to police, his superiors — in other words, prosecutors.

"Did you have that fear about me?" Caudill asked. Stamps told him no, but that he feared going to prosecutors would cause his commander to find out that he leaked the information. In his questioning, Caudill reminded him that telling Rudolf led to the same result.

Carruth will spend the holiday week in jail, since court is in recess all of next week. Testimony resumes on January 2.