The Galveston County Daily News

TEXAS CITY — The jury deliberating the case of a man accused in a torture slaying went home Monday without reaching a verdict.

Jurors were expected to continue today deliberating the fate of William Henry Perry, 50, who is one of two men charged with murder in the Texas City hotel-room killing of Gary Wayne Bell.

Judge John Ellisor, who is presiding over Perry’s case in Galveston’s 122nd District Court, ruled Monday that one juror was disabled.

The juror told the court she wanted to be released from duty to be with a hospitalized relative, whose condition was considered grave. Despite objections from Jeremy DuCote, Perry’s defense attorney, Ellisor ruled an alternate juror would join the deliberations.

That juror heard all the testimony but missed about four hours of deliberation, which began at 9:25 a.m. Monday.

Bell, 39, was beaten, choked and drowned April 12, 2008, at the Comfort Inn and Suites, in a torturous affair that involved a brutal beating and repeated airway restriction, testimony revealed.

Bell’s body was found the following day, hogtied and bobbing in Galveston Bay near 81st Street in Galveston.

Dr. Stephen Pustilnik, Galveston County’s chief medical examiner, testified Friday that an object was placed around Bell’s neck and used to strangle him repeatedly, depriving him of air.

Pustilnik agreed with prosecutor Larry Drosnes, when he asked whether the ligature was used as a torture device.

Drosnes asked Pustilnik what kind of mental and physical state Bell would have encountered during his ordeal.

“Physical pain,” Pustilnik said. “There are a lot of nerves in neck structures. It causes the inability to breath… Air hunger causes tremendous terror and fear on the inability of anybody to breathe.”

Bell was dead when his body was dumped in the bay the night of Aug. 12, Pustilnik said.

An autopsy revealed Bell, who had just been released from prison, had alcohol and cocaine in his system, Pustilnik said.

Bell’s death likely was not caused by the small amount of water in his sphenoid sinuses, but it was listed as a contributing factor, Pustilnik said.

A “death rattle,” which Pustilnik explained as the uncontrolled movement of the diaphragm from final stimuli from the brain, could have pulled enough water into Bell’s sinuses.

In last week’s testimony, Mary Jowers, 33, told jurors Bell raped her and didn’t pay her for sex.

Jowers’ boyfriend, Brian O’Neal Richardson, 28, also is charged with murder in Bell’s death.

Jowers testified she rode with Richardson to dump Bell’s body in the bay. Jowers also implicated Perry and Richardson in the beating of Bell in the Texas City Comfort Inn and Suites.

The state, however, found no DNA evidence linking Perry to Bell’s slaying, and testimony revealed Bell was alive after Perry left the hotel for good.

“I believe Mary Jowers is one of God’s most imperfect human beings,” Drosnes told the jury Friday. Drosnes also said he believed Jowers was telling the truth.