Justice for Scotty Weaver Murder?

Nichole Bryars Kelsay and Robert Holly Lofton Porter, both 20, have been charged with capital murder and await trial, according to the report. Nichole Bryars Kelsay and Robert Holly Lofton Porter, both 20, have been charged with capital murder and await trial, according to the Associated Press.

Here's Weaver's story back in August 2004:

Scotty Joe Weaver was murdered here. He was strangled, stabbed, cut, doused with gasoline and burned off a backwoods street not far from the Bay Minette water tower that looms over the country landscape like an ominous beacon.

An eerie silence surrounds the Dobbins Mobile Home trailer that the 18-year-old shared with his lifelong pals. The yellow police tape has been removed from the scene of the crime. The murder suspects, his so-called friends and roommates - Nichole Kelsay, 20, and Christopher Gaines, 22 - and another acquaintance - Robert Porter, 20 - are now in jail facing capital murder charges for his savage killing. Now that investigators have announced the crime was motivated in part because he was gay, the furor surrounding the murder of Scotty Weaver is far from over.

The water tower's red lights are turned on as if it's screaming "WARNING! WARNING!" to the more than 7,000 mostly blue-collar, Bible Belt conservative residents in the sleepy Alabama town and any visitors who dare to drop in. The Baldwin County judge will hold a preliminary hearing on Friday, Aug. 27, 2004 and the national media will descend on the unsuspecting rural area. Prosecutors and experts say there's no doubt this crime was fueled by hate, based on the high number and location of the wounds.

"It's obvious that either before death, there was great pain and torture, or else there was abuse of the corpse," Baldwin County District Attorney David Whetstone told reporters when the case first broke. "It is suggestive of overkill, which is not something you see in a regular robbery and murder." Crews from Good Morning America and other media outlets will shine a spotlight on the small rural enclave that somehow nurtured such a gruesome act of intolerance. During the Aug. 27 hearing, the country will get its first glimpse of Bay Minette, hidden less than an hour away from Pensacola, under the national microscope. And, based on this reporter's experience, it won't be a pretty picture.

BROTHER'S PAIN
Lum Weaver, Scotty's oldest brother, hasn't slept in weeks. He's sitting in the Bay Minette Waffle House where his little brother worked double shifts to pay the bills.

"Nichole and Chris didn't have jobs," Weaver says, barely able to hold his head up throughout the interview. "Scotty would work extra hours to pay for the trailer. And Nichole and Chris would pretty much sit around all day." Weaver says he knew Kelsay and Gaines most of his life.

"Nichole and Scotty were friends forever. My mother would watch her kid, while she was out partying. Because this is a small town, we knew Chris as well," he says. "We didn't really know much about the third guy, Robert, except that he had some problems with the law."

Scotty's oldest brother, who is also gay, says he always suspected that Gaines had issues with homophobia.

"I would joke around with him, and I knew I couldn't cross a certain line with him," Weaver recalls. "He definitely is homophobic. But so are a lot of people around here."

Weaver and other gays in this Dixie outback have endured a consistent stream of insults and threats because of their sexual orientation.

"At night, people will throw beer bottles at trailers of people they know in the area who are gay," Weaver says. "They even have sprayed 'faggot' on the side of my friends' trucks."

The 24-year-old says his younger brother experienced more brutality than he did because he was "out there" with his sexuality.

"Scotty had it real bad in school," he says. "I always warned him that something awful could happen to him. But he was just being himself." After his brother's grisly murder, Weaver decided he needed to take a stand, even though he fears for his own life.

"We have to do something about what's going on," he insists. "There is no sane reason behind what happened to my brother."

Weaver says the gay bashing continues, even after Scotty's murder. "But this town has definitely been woken up."

And, he insists, evil is rearing its ugly head.

"Even at his wake, the reverend holding the service said, in so many words, that Scotty was going to hell for who he was," he says. "I mean, she was supposed to be a family friend and she was preaching hate. God, for me, is about love."

As if there were any doubts to Weaver's claims, a group of teens gathered in the corner of the Waffle House start making "fag" jokes and carry on throughout the interview. Weaver continues to recount his brother's struggles, while the small group of boys spew venom - including one "joke" making fun of Scotty's murder that is too disturbing even to print here.

"Scotty always kept his head high," he says, ignoring the Bay Minette teens gathered in the corner. "He was such an outgoing and fun-loving person. Scotty would give the shirt off his back for anyone."

MOTHER'S GRIEF
When Scotty was 9-years-old, he developed a knot on the side of his neck. Later, it was diagnosed as a form of cancer known as Hodgkin's disease. After two years of chemotherapy, Scotty wanted to one day pursue a job in the medical profession.

"He was planning to get his GED and eventually go to college," Lum says. "My mom thought she was going to lose him then," he remembers. "And then the cancer went into remission."

Weaver says his mother, Martha, is destroyed by the circumstances surrounding her son's murder.

"She lost her baby boy," says Weaver, the oldest of Martha's four sons. "Just when she thought he had beat cancer, this happened. She's devastated." The oldest son says he tries to bring his mother, who is on disability leave, to town to keep her mind off the trauma. But when I call recently to speak to Lum Weaver and identify myself as a reporter, Martha answers in a shaky voice and then bursts into sobs.

"She cries a lot," Weaver says. "The hardest thing for her to understand is that Nichole (Kelsay) and Chris (Gaines) played a part in the killing. Right now, she doesn't know who to trust."

Weaver reveals that both Kelsay's and Gaines' family have called his mother. "They all point their fingers at the other person," he says. "Nichole swears she was forced to go along with the others or they would hurt her baby. Chris says that the other guy (Porter) and Nichole did it," he says. "All three blame the others and refuse to take responsibility."

Weaver says he and his mother found some disturbing evidence when they cleaned out the trailer at Dobbins.

"All Nichole and Chris had was an old mattress. We found used needles in their stuff too," he says. "And, my mom and I saw that they have taken some of Scotty's electronic equipment."

Weaver says he and his mother realized something was wrong when Kelsay and Gaines stopped by her home two days after Scotty's disappearance. "At first, we thought my brother might have taken off," Weaver says. "But, when he didn't show up for his shift at Waffle House and then Nichole and Chris stopped by, my mom knew something was wrong."

MURDER IN DIXIE
Scotty Joe Weaver was strangled, stabbed, cut and set on fire on Sunday, July 18, 2004. His last visit home, sometime that morning, was to drop off money he borrowed from his mother to help finance his new place. This was the last time Martha Weaver would see her son alive.

"Scotty would call mom all the time," Weaver explains. "He and I would go days without talking, but Scotty always kept in contact with our mother." Scotty had mentioned to his mom, the Friday before his murder, that he almost had had enough of Kelsay and Gaines.

"They weren't working or paying bills," Weaver says. "It was almost as if they took over his place."

Scotty had to man the late shift at the Bay Minette Waffle House, and he rushed home to get ready for work.

"I've played the scenario over and over in my mind," Weaver adds. "The only thing I can think happened was that he was attacked while he was in the bathroom getting ready."

After not hearing from her son for several days, Scotty's mother filed a missing persons report on Thursday, July 22. Later that night, a driver in a RV came across the charred body on Old Brady Road, left there for four days. In hindsight, investigators say the three suspects, Gaines, Kelsay and Porter, tied Weaver up in the trailer before killing him. Then, they robbed him of about $80.

Sheriff's investigators say Gaines and Porter killed Weaver inside the trailer then disposed of the body just a few miles down the road. Huey Mack with the Baldwin County Sheriff's Department explained it to reporters: "While there, they set fire to the crime scene in an attempt to destroy evidence. There are also indications that he may have been strangled. There's also indication there may have been other means used to cause the death of Scotty Weaver."

The "other means" are words that disturb the eldest Weaver.

"They had to identify his body by his dental records," he points out. "That tells you how bad it was right there."

The overkill of his brother, along with the robbery, puzzles Weaver the most.

"There's no doubt in my mind that hate - that homophobia - killed my little brother. No doubt in my mind at all."

LAWS UNDER FIRE
As word spread about Weaver's slaying, rumors surrounding his passion for cross-dressing surfaced in reports. In fact, the 18-year-old would frequent Pensacola's gay hotspot to find refuge from his small-town existence. "He would dress as Dolly Parton and enter the amateur drag contests at Emerald City," Weaver says. "He loved to perform and we're proud that he found something that made him happy."

Mark Potok, a representative of the Southern Poverty Law Center, insists the gay community as a whole is susceptible to the most extreme "hate crime" violence.

"Between 15 and 20 gays and lesbians are killed a year because of their sexual orientation" says the editor of the resource center's Intelligence Report. "The LGBT community is by far the most likely group to be attacked ó two-times more likely than African-Americans. And, my God, the likelihood that someone from the transgender community will be attacked is even higher."

In Potok's opinion, Weaver's autopsy report released July 26, 2004 reveals that the murder was committed out of hate. He cites the overkill - the strangulation, stabbing and burning - as proof.

Potok slams the Southeast's "hate crime" protections. Alabama law allows prosecutors to bring capital murder charges for specific kinds of killings, but don't include hate crimes against gays. They do include murders committed during the commission of another felony. Florida laws, on the other hand, protect sexual orientation, but not victims of gender-identity-related murders.

A person who kills during a robbery in Alabama, for example, can receive a death sentence, while a person who kills because of the victim's sexuality cannot even be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Potok continues: "The Scotty Joe Weaver case shows once more how outrageous it is that most Southern states don't include sexual orientation in their 'hate crime' laws."

Meanwhile, Lum Weaver prepares for the media onslaught that will likely accompany his baby brother's murder trial.

"I met a girl recently whose brother was murdered a few years back," Weaver says. "She told me that this will take years to resolve with all the trials and retrials."

Weaver continues, trying to hold back the tears: "Right now, everything is a blur for me. But, I've decided I must stand up for my little brother. He needs me now."