By Mrs. Eileen Hunter — about the author. Posted August 11, 2026.
Every murder weapon tells a account of custody: who owned it, who had it, where it went. In this case, that trail is one of the strongest threads in the record — and none of it runs through Tony Hunter.
What the record shows
- The recovery: on March 17, 2001 — a week after the killings — Monroe police recovered the .22 caliber murder weapon from a median off Highway 165, discarded, as the filings put it, “as if hurriedly thrown out of a car window.” (R. 207, 2063–64.)
- The trace: the serial number led to Randall Smith, who had given the gun to his son Corey Smith. Corey reported it stolen from his truck at the Library Lounge; he never filed a police report because he lacked the serial number. (R. 207.)
- The fingerprints: “there were no latent [fingerprints] on the weapon that would connect it to Tony Hunter.” (Tr. 100.)
- The note: a handwritten investigator’s note dated February 20, 2004 — disclosed with the DA’s file years after trial — recorded Corey Smith saying he had given his truck keys to his friend Keith Norman on the night of his January 11, 2001 arrest (verified by police report, 1:07 a.m.), and that he believed Norman traded the gun for drugs; the gun was missing from his glove box the next day. (Motion to Reconsider, procedural history.)
- The informants’ versions: Comanche claimed Mr. Hunter said the gun was in “the same spot I been having for years” — while it sat in an evidence locker, recovered from a public median. Wiggins named a .38 and a 9 millimeter. Kennedy heard no weapon at all. (The comparison.)
Why it matters
The gun is the one physical object that indisputably connects to the murders — and its documented trail runs from Corey Smith’s glove box through Keith Norman’s hands to a median, with no print, purchase, or possession tying it to Tony Hunter. The note pointing at another possessor became the centerpiece of the 2009 Brady/Kyles application. (Why that evidence is exculpatory.)
The other half: the 2009 application was denied without an evidentiary hearing, a federal petition was later dismissed as time-barred, and no court has ever ruled on the note’s implications on the merits. Keith Norman was never charged, and this site draws no conclusion about him — we report what the investigator’s note records Corey Smith saying, and where the courts left it. (Procedural history.)