East Texas

By CASEY KNAUPP
Staff Writer

Aldener Dunning pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiracy to commit capital murder and was sentenced to five years in prison for her involvement in the plot to kill a confidential informant who helped land her son in jail.

The 59-year-old Lindale woman pleaded guilty to the first-degree felony and was sentenced to the minimum punishment by 241st District Judge Jack Skeen Jr.

But instead of going to the penitentiary, Ms. Dunning was placed on a $10,000 bond and could remain out of jail pending the resolution of an appeal on a pre-trial motion to quash her indictment.

After Skeen earlier denied defense attorney Clifton Roberson’s motion to quash the indictment, Ms. Dunning pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit capital murder, admitting her guilt in the case but reserving the right to appeal the judge’s decision. If she loses her appeal, she will then be sent to prison to serve out her term. She would be eligible for parole after one-fourth of her sentence. If her appeal is granted, she will not be incarcerated.

Ms. Dunning testified during the hearing Tuesday about several medical problems she suffers. She has been in the Smith County Jail since her arrest on Jan. 19, 2007.

In October, Ms. Dunning’s son, Johnathan “Bisco” Toliver, was convicted by a jury of conspiracy to commit capital murder and was sentenced to life in prison.

The 37-year-old Lindale man will be eligible for parole after serving 15 years for the conspiracy offense and will serve the sentence after he serves a minimum of 15 years he received the year before for delivering crack cocaine to the confidential informant (CI) he tried to have killed.

An undercover Tyler police narcotics investigator testified during Toliver’s trial that the CI worked for him in May and June of 2006, buying drugs from Toliver and six other drug dealers, first to “work off” a drug charge and then for money.

Toliver was indicted on three delivery charges after the CI purchased crack from him.

On June 25, 2006, when the CI wasn’t working for the police, he was arrested in Smith County on a burglary charge and placed back in jail. On Sept. 26, 2006, the investigator learned of Toliver’s plot to kill the CI. At 9 a.m. on Oct. 8, 2006, the investigator received a call from the CI, asking him if he had bonded him out of the Smith County Jail. He said he and two other investigators armed themselves with rifles and bulletproof vests and went to get the CI, whom he had told to go back inside the jail until they arrived. The three armed investigators stood watch over the man for three days until they could get him out of the county.

Tyler Police Detective Kevin Mobley testified he was with FBI Special Agent Garrett Floyd on Oct. 8, 2006, when Richard Keith Lawson called Floyd from the Smith County Jail on Toliver’s cell phone, informing them that the CI had been bonded out of jail and that Toliver planned to have him killed. Lawson, who was not charged in the case, said he was offered $1,000 to murder the man so he wouldn’t be able to testify in Toliver’s upcoming drug cases.

Johnathan “Greasy Greg” Brown’s role was that he and Jessie James Jackson would lure the CI into Ms. Dunning’s car and keep him at a location until the plan could be carried out, he said. Mobley said Ms. Dunning instructed Brown to pick up Jackson, whom she had bonded out of jail, to go look for the CI in her car.

In an interview Mobley conducted with Brown, Brown described how the CI would be killed and buried in a hole used for burning trash at Ms. Dunning’s property in the country. He said Toliver told him Ms. Dunning was going to move because the body was going to be disposed of there.

Three months after Ms. Dunning fled Tyler and the others had been arrested for the conspiracy, she was found hiding in an attic at her daughter’s house in Dallas, Mobley said.

Brown, 33, Tyler, and Jackson, 53, Tyler, are scheduled to go to trial in the case on July 7.

Former Smith County Jailer Kenya Bush, 26, Longview, was also charged with the conspiracy for supplying Toliver with information about the CI and his picture, but Mobley said he believed she didn’t know about the murder plot.

Assistant Smith County district attorneys Joe Murphy and Zach Davis are prosecuting the case.