Explosive Details Emerge in First Two Days of Nelson Murder Trial

The trial against Dylan David Nelson for the July 2017 murder of La Grange plumber Jeremy Cornwell began on Tuesday, Sept. 21. If convicted of first degree murder, Nelson faces five to 99 years or life in prison.

District Judge Jeff Steinhauser said the trial could last the rest of this week and possibly Monday of next week.

Proceedings are taking place at the La Grange KC Hall to accommodate COVID-19 social distancing requirements put in place by the State Judiciary. Jury selection took place on Monday, Sept. 20.

District Clerk Linda Svrcek said her office sent out 400 jury summonses; 117 people showed up on Monday. By the end of the day, lawyers for the two sides narrowed the pool down to 12 jurors and two alternates, including nine men and five women.

Natalie Tise, a 25-year prosecutor with the Texas Attorney General’s Office, is assisting District Attorney Peggy Supak and her assistant James Herbrich. La Grange attorneys Richard Halpain and Jeff Heintschel represent Nelson.

The first day of the trial began with the prosecution’s opening statement, delivered by Herbrich. Herbrich said the circumstances that led to the murder began when Nelson gave a .380 firearm to a local teen, Tessa Mangis, as a belated birthday gift. Herbrich said Nelson was “obsessed” with Mangis and began stalking her. Herbrich said Mangis gave the gun to her boyfriend. Herbrich said Nelson later demanded the gun back and an argument ensued. Nelson drove from the Houston area to La Grange to retrieve the gun, Herbrich said. He said Nelson stalked Mangis at her place of work, Sammy’s Sports Grill, but she hid from him with the help of her manager, Emily Scott. Nelson then went searching for her at Mangis’s boyfriend’s house on Lane Pool Road and then to Cornwell’s house on Creamer Creek Road, because Cornwell’s son Josh Thomas was a mutual friend of theirs. Thomas had moved to Arizona a few days before, however.

Herbrich alleged that Nelson got into an argument with Cornwell at the front door of his house and then shot him seven times. Herbrich said Nelson left Cornwell’s residence. He said surveillance video shows Nelson’s car driving past Kort’s Korner, Colorado Valley Telephone Cooperative on US 77, and the Best Western in Schulenburg along Interstate 10. Nelson got into a traffic accident on Interstate 10 west of Sealy. After the wreck, Herbrich alleged Nelson threw the murder weapon and his cell phone into a puddle of water along Interstate 10 near the TA Truck Stop.

The state’s first witness was Cornwell’s employer Daniel Cernoch. Cernoch said Cornwell failed to show up for work on July 6, 2017, which he said was unusual because Cornwell rarely missed a day of work. Cernoch said Cornwell didn’t answer his phone that morning, so he drove to Cornwell’s house on Creamer Creek Road to check on him. Cernoch said he honked his horn several times, but Cornwell didn’t come out of his house. Cornwell’s mother Karen Cornwell lived next door and Cernoch said he saw her outside. Cernoch said he spoke with her, and she said she would check on him. Cernoch said he then left the property and noticed emergency personnel pass him by on his way back to La Grange.

The next witness, Karen Cornwell, delivered emotional testimony about finding Cornwell’s body when she opened the front door of his house on the morning of July 6.

The day before, she said she heard a shout from her son’s house and several “pops.” She said it was not unusual to hear gunshots on the property, because Cornwell, his son Josh Thomas and Thomas’s friends often fired guns for target practice in the back of the property. She said she also noticed the top of a red car leaving the property.

The state next called Tessa Mangis to the witness stand. She spoke about her relationship with Nelson. Mangis said she first thought of Nelson as an older friend. She said she later broke off communication with him.

“No matter what I said, he felt like he had a right to be in my life,” Mangis testified.

She testified about the .380 pistol Nelson gave her as a birthday gift, and how her boyfriend was going to pawn it for money, but someone else later took it from a friend’s house and it eventually ended up in the custody of the La Grange Police Department. She said that “infuriated” Nelson. She spoke about the stalking incident at Sammy’s and numerous text messages and phone calls she got from Nelson. After the murder, she said the texts and calls stopped. Emily Scott, Mangis’ manager at the time, also testified for the state and corroborated Mangis’ testimony about Nelson stalking her at Sammy’s.

During jury selection on Monday, Tise spent time discussing the prosecution’s use of jailhouse informants in trials, saying that testimony from such an informant must be corroborated “with something else that tends to connect the defendant with the offense.” One of the prosecutions key witnesses on day one of the trial was David Williams, a La Grange man who was in the same Fayette County Jail cell as Nelson shortly after Nelson’s 2017 arrest for a stalking charge.

Williams testified on Tuesday that Nelson told him about the murder while they were in jail. Williams testified that Nelson told him that he drank an entire bottle of liquor on his way from Houston to La Grange on July 5, 2017. Williams said that Nelson was mad because he wanted back the gun he gave Mangis for her birthday. Williams testified that Nelson told him he “heard voices in his head that said someone needed to die.”

Williams said Nelson was looking for Mangis’ then-boyfriend, Jakorian Wilson, whom Nelson thought may have been at Cornwell’s house.

“He was pissed he couldn’t find Jakorian,” Williams testified.

Williams said Nelson told him that killed Cornwell with a 9 mm pistol.

“He said he shot all the bullets before the body hit the ground,” Williams said.

Williams said he informed on Nelson because, “I knew Jeremy and he didn’t deserve what happened to him.”

Williams said he informed Chief Deputy Randy Noviskie of the Sheriff’s Office about what Nelson told him in the cell. Williams said he convinced Nelson that he wanted to pin the murder charge on Wilson, who happens to be Williams’ cousin, because the two of them did not get along. He said he helped Nelson draw a map of where the murder weapon could be found, but the hand-drawn map did not make much sense. Williams said he then obtained a printed map of Interstate 10 from the jailers. He said Nelson marked the spot on the map where the murder weapon could be found.

Investigators later recovered the alleged murder weapon from a ditch near the site where Nelson crashed his car.

Upon cross examination, Halpain questioned Williams’ motives for helping investigators with the murder case. Williams testified that he now lives in Minnesota, despite being on probation in Fayette County. Williams testified that he did not have permission to move to Minnesota. Furthermore, Williams said Supak’s office has filed a motion to revoke his probation, although he remains out of jail pending a drug analysis test.

“How many crimes have you committed?” Haplain asked Williams, to which Tise objected for improper impeachment. Steinhauser stopped that line of questioning.

“You’re telling me and this jury that the conversation you had with Noviskie and you agreeing to testify has nothing to do with your cases in district court?” Halpain asked Williams.

“Absolutely not,” Williams said.

The last witness on Tuesday was Trooper Colby Havel of the Texas Department of Public Safety. Havel investigated Nelson’s traffic accident on the day of the murder. Havel testified that Nelson seemed nervous after the accident, which he said was not unusual for a motorist following an crash.

Upon cross examination, Havel told Halpain that he did not smell alcohol on Nelson’s breath and that Nelson did not appear to be intoxicated. That seemed to differ from William’s testimony that Nelson drank a bottle of liquor between Houston and La Grange that day.

The state was set to continue calling witnesses on Wednesday. Look for more on the trial in Tuesday’s paper.