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Trial opens in love triangle killings

Barry L. Soldridge Jr. was his best friend. Derek K. Henry, his "second-best friend."

The first: On trial facing the death penalty. The other: Dead at 36 from gunshots that tore through his face and also killed his girlfriend.

It all happened last year at the Lehigh Township trailer home of their mutual friend, Jason Kern. And so Monday, Kern took the stand in Northampton County Court against Soldridge, describing a stormy night in which, for the first time, Kern refused to step between two pals who were feuding over a woman.

The arguments had happened before, ever since Candice M. Shuey, 22, left Soldridge and began dating Henry nearly a year before. But on Sept. 22, 2010, Kern had just gotten back from work, was "dirty" and "needed a shower" and let the men sort it out themselves.

Kern, his eyes downcast and his left hand shielding his gaze, spoke haltingly as he told of how gunfire erupted after Soldridge went and got his rifle. How bullets shattered Kern's shower door and his toilet bowl. How he found Henry "in pieces" in the driveway behind the wheel of his car. How Kern and Hillary Blase, Kern's girlfriend, fled their N. Cottonwood Road house fearing they could be next.

Cold-hearted murder by a jealous man who had mulled it for months? Or the final eruption of a humiliated cuckold whose longtime girlfriend had left him for his friend?

Those were the respective descriptions offered by prosecutors and Soldridge's defense in opening statements before the first day of testimony.

Soldridge, 39, isn't disputing that he killed Shuey and Henry with an assault rifle. But his lead attorney, Christopher Shipman, said it wasn't premeditated murder.

"Mr. Soldridge, he snapped," Shipman told jurors. "All the fears, all the anger, all the disappointments, all the things that he felt since Ms. Shuey walked out the door that he denied, [they] broke loose."

District Attorney John Morganelli said Soldridge knew exactly what he was doing, and had threatened to kill Shuey and Henry many times before.

Soldridge spotted Henry's car that night. He confronted the couple. He drove to his mother's house. He kicked open a door and grabbed his AR-15. Then he returned and gunned down Henry and Shuey, Morganelli said.

"This was not a spur of the moment decision made by Barry Soldridge Jr.," Morganelli said, later adding: "This defendant thought about this for months."

Henry was shot in the left cheek and upper left arm as he apparently had both hands on the steering wheel, said Dr. Samuel Land, a pathologist. Shuey, whose body was found down the driveway, was shot once in the back, said Dr. Isidore Mihalakis, who examined her.

If Soldridge, of Washington Township, Lehigh County, is convicted of first-degree murder, the same jury would have to decide whether he should be sentenced to life without parole or death by lethal injection.

In a phone call after the shootings, Soldridge said he "did something very bad," could not remember what happened, and was "very, very sorry," testified Douglas Williams, a longtime friend.

To his boss, L. James Frank, Soldridge confessed that night during a ride together to Frank's home, also in Washington Township.

"What did you do at that point?" Morganelli asked Frank, now of Savannah, Ga.

"Nothing," Frank said. "I continued on to my house."

"What did you just say?" interjected Judge Emil Giordano.

"Nothing. I continued on to my house," Frank repeated matter of factly.

Once there, Frank gave a beer to Soldridge, who got on the couch and watched TV — even as another man came by and said police were looking for him.

Eventually, Frank's cellphone rang, but, he said, he didn't recognize the number and didn't pick up.

"The next thing I know there is a spotlight on my house and somebody yelling, 'Come out with your hands up,' " Frank recalled.

"And what did you do?" Morganelli asked.

"I came out with my hands up," Frank said, again matter of factly.


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