Day 5 of the Yella Beezy Trial: If the Jury Can't Use the $40,000 Story, What Proves the Hire?

Mo3 died on I-35 around noon on November 11, 2020, shot down on a Dallas highway in front of people who were just trying to get somewhere. The man the State says pulled the trigger, Kewon White, has already been convicted. That part of this story has a verdict. The part this jury has to decide does not. Prosecutors say Markies Conway, the rapper the whole country knows as Yella Beezy, paid for that killing. The defense says the State has a feud, a lot of cash and a lot of suspicion, and no hire.

Monday was supposed to be the day the payment walked into the courtroom. The State put its money witness on the stand: Theodore Thomas, a friend of Conway's since high school, the man who told a Dallas County grand jury in February 2025 that Yella Beezy and Trapboy Freddy wanted Mo3 dead and that the $40,000 for the killing came from them. He sat in front of this jury under a grant of immunity. And he told them that story was a lie.

Here's my read, and I'll carry it all the way through this piece. After five days, the State has proved who killed Mo3 about as well as a murder can be proved. It has not yet given this jury one piece of evidence the jury is allowed to use to find that Markies Conway hired anybody. The only words spoken in that courtroom that say he paid came in on a leash. The judge told the jurors, over and over through the afternoon, that Thomas's grand jury testimony goes to whether they believe Thomas, and that they can't use it as evidence of Conway's guilt. On a murder-for-hire charge, that limit decides almost everything.

I want to walk you through how the day got there, because the morning matters to the afternoon, and because some of what happened Monday deserves a harder look than it's getting.

▶ DAY 5 TOP MOMENTS (PUBLIC) A $76,000 Invoice, a Grand Jury Recant, Facing Life

What the State Has to Prove, and Which Piece Monday Was About

Start with the charge, because it tells you what every witness is for. On Day 1 the State read the indictment to the jury. It accuses Conway of causing Mo3's death "by employing" Kewon White to murder him "for remuneration and the promise of remuneration, namely United States currency from defendant." That's capital murder in Texas under the murder-for-hire part of the statute. Conway isn't charged with shooting anyone. He's charged with hiring the shooter.

So the State has to prove four things beyond a reasonable doubt. One, that a murder happened: someone intentionally or knowingly caused Mo3's death. Two, that Conway employed the killer to do it. Three, that the deal was for money, paid or promised. Four, that Conway himself meant for the killing to happen. Fail on any one of them and the charge fails, however terrible the crime.

Element one has been in front of this jury since the first morning: the 911 call, the dashcam, the 44 casings from one gun, the surgeon who tried to save Mo3 with glass in his own neck. Nobody in that room is arguing that Mo3 wasn't murdered. White's own verdict doesn't bind this jury, so the State has to prove it again, and it has.

Elements two, three and four are a different story. Going into Monday, the State had shown the jury the shooter's money: $9,670 on Kewon White when he was stopped twelve days after the killing, 354 five-dollar bills, a jewelry receipt with the name Jerry on it. It had shown the jury Conway added as a guest on a 26-night hotel stay in Los Angeles, a stay the defense says was first booked for three nights. The defense told this jury in its opening that the State's theory involved a $40,000 cash withdrawal at a Frisco bank. As of the end of Day 4, no bank record of a withdrawal like that had been put in front of the jury, and Monday didn't bring one either. What the State still needed was a link between Conway's money and White's hands. Day 5 was built to supply it.

Before the Jury Came In: An Immunity Deal That "Reads a Little Bit Odd"

The day opened with housekeeping that turned out to be anything but. The State swore in its remaining witnesses as a group and put them under the rule, which means they can't talk to each other or anyone else about testimony. Then the prosecutor told the judge that Theodore Thomas was in the courthouse and that the State expected to call him "after the first morning break." The State, he said, had a signed "use immunity agreement" and had shown it to the defense and to Thomas's lawyer, James Lee Bright.

If you missed Day 3, here's why that matters. On Thursday, outside the jury's presence, Thomas took the stand and pleaded the Fifth. He wouldn't answer. A witness can't be forced to say things that could be used to prosecute him. Use immunity is how the government gets around that. The State promises that what he says on the stand, and anything they find because of it, won't be used against him. Once that promise is in place, the Fifth Amendment no longer protects his silence, and he can be made to testify. What immunity never covers is lying on the stand. Perjury is still perjury.

Bright told the judge the agreement "reads a little bit odd." He started to explain why, something about its "very specific language," and then what we have of the record cuts off as the jury was brought in. We never heard the rest of his argument, and we never heard a ruling. I want you to hold onto that, because it's the first of two gaps in what the public got to see on Monday, and the second one is bigger.

A Jeweler, a Guy Named Jerry, and $76,000

The jury came in and the State called Karim Ali, a jeweler of more than 20 years whose store, Manhattan Jewelers, sits in the Parks Mall in Arlington. His store made the chains. He identified two of them. State's 1156, a chain reading G R C with what he described as a rifle on top. State's 1155, a bigger medallion, same letters, "get rich cartel" across the top. GRC is the group the State says connects Conway, his friends and the shooter.

Then the State asked who ordered them. "There's multiple customers comes in," Ali said. He didn't know who designed them. Pressed on who he dealt with, he said, "a guy named Jerry." He didn't know Jerry's last name. And when the prosecutor asked whether he was familiar with GRC or Get Rich Cartel, he said, "No, ma'am."

The paperwork came next. An invoice under the name GRC for a watch, a GRC pendant and a lady's ring, about $31,000. An invoice under "Yellow BZ" for a custom pendant, a diamond watch and diamond bracelets. The prosecutor said "about $67,000." Ali corrected the number: "$76,000." A receipt for a GRC piece under "Banzo Bling slash white," about $3,250. And a layaway receipt dated November 22, 2020, under "Banzo, Bling, and then Jerry": a diamond ring and a gold chain, $100 down, $1,650 still owed. Asked if that was the same Jerry he dealt with, Ali said, "I'm thinking yes."

▶ CLIP (GO-LIVE TIME TO BE POSTED) Jeweler Names Jerry as His GRC Chain Contact and Identifies a $76,000 Invoice

That $76,000 number will be the headline, and I understand why. But listen to what the defense did with it, because it was the best cross of the morning. Ali agreed he's known Conway since about 2018 or 2019, that he met him through Conway's girlfriend, and that he's driven up to their gated community in Frisco to show jewelry, through a guard shack, with permission. Conway was a frequent custom customer. Then the dates. The $76,000 "invoice" wasn't a 2020 sales slip. It was a summary Ali's store created on September 25, 2024, after Dallas police asked for records. It covers only some of what Conway bought over the years. "There were many more pieces?" "Yes."

And the cash. Did Conway usually pay in cash? Yes. Is that unusual for a rap artist? "No. That's a constant, yeah. That's normal."

So what does that invoice prove? It proves a successful rapper spent a lot of money on jewelry at a store he'd been going to for years. It doesn't put a dollar in Kewon White's hand. It doesn't even put a dollar in Jerry's hand. If the State's point is that Conway had money, nobody disputes that. The question in this case was never whether he could afford a killing. It's whether he paid for one.

Whose Money Is on the Counter?

Here's where the morning got strange, and where I think the defense took a risk that paid off. It was the defense, not the State, that put videos from the shooter's own iCloud in front of the jury.

The defense offered records from an iCloud account associated with Kewon White, and three short videos from it, shot inside Manhattan Jewelers on November 22, 2020, around 3:16 to 3:21 in the afternoon. Eleven days after Mo3 died. Ali confirmed it was his store. On the screen, a man in a very colorful jacket sets a bundle of cash on the counter, tied up in rubber bands, and pulls more money out of his pocket. Then he counts it out. Hundreds, fifties, twenties, tens. Then fives.

The defense put up still shots and walked Ali through the rubber bands. Three black bands and one red, with beige bands around the whole bundle. Then it showed him photos already in evidence and asked if the bands looked the same. "It looks the same type of colors, yes." Similar stacks, similar bands. And through all of it, the same answer on whether this was unusual: nothing unusual in his store for somebody to pull out cash like that and pay for jewelry.

▶ CLIP (GO-LIVE TIME TO BE POSTED) Jeweler Says the Rubber-Banded Cash in Kewon White's iCloud Videos Was Normal

Why would the defense want the jury looking at cash from the shooter's phone? I think it's the same theory it opened with on Day 1: that the money around White was drug money, a street mix of small bills, not cash fresh out of a bank in Frisco. The transcript doesn't say whose cash was on that counter, and Ali didn't either. But nobody in that courtroom testified that it came from Conway.

The Flights: Same Plane, Separate Tickets

At about 52 minutes into the day the State called Diala Alrihani, a senior fraud and insider threat investigator for American Airlines. She's the records witness, and her records are the State's best circumstantial evidence of the week so far. I'll give the State its due here.

Conway flew Dallas to Los Angeles on November 10, 2020, the day before Mo3 was killed, on a ticket booked November 4. Theodore Thomas was on the same flight. Different record locator, meaning a separate booking, created just after midnight on November 5. And the person who booked both trips gave "the same exact address." On November 19 Conway booked a flight home for the 20th and, a few hours later, a flight back to Los Angeles for the 22nd. Thomas was on that November 20 flight home too, booked the same day Conway booked his.

▶ CLIP (GO-LIVE TIME TO BE POSTED) American Airlines Investigator Puts Theodore Thomas on Conway's LA Flights

Then the third name. Devaris Moore, the rapper known as Trapboy Freddy, flew Dallas to Los Angeles on November 13, two days after the killing. His ticket was created that same afternoon at 4:11, a little under four hours before an 8 p.m. departure. He flew back on November 21 on a ticket booked that same morning, shortly before takeoff. The prosecutor closed by asking whether Conway had anyone else on his own reservations in November. No one on the 10th, no one on the 20th, no one on the 22nd.

That's the State's frame: three men in Los Angeles together in the week Mo3 died, one of them leaving Dallas in a hurry. It's real evidence and it's admissible for everything. What it shows is where people were. It doesn't show a deal.

The defense cross made the travel look like a touring rapper's year, and the records backed it. The November 22 booking listed "Rosh Entertainment," as the transcript hears it, and a cell number for "a person named Greg," the kind of handler entertainers use. Records from Conway's record company matched the airline's flight numbers on every November trip. Then the defense walked her through Conway's 2020 on American: a January trip with Keith Jones and Theodore Thomas on the same record, then Los Angeles, Charlotte to Denver, LaGuardia, Miami, Los Angeles again and again. By the defense's count, about 17 flights booked the day before departure. "Seems to fly to LA a lot." "According to these records, yes." And the answer that undercut the prosecutor's closing question: people on the same flight can be on separate reservations. "No, they could be booked in a separate record locator if they're flying the same flight." The State told the jury nobody else was on Conway's reservations. Its own witness told the jury that doesn't mean nobody was flying with him.

One more thing from her cross, because it may come back. The record company's travel log showed a booking for Conway on AA 2484, Los Angeles to Dallas, November 13. American's records don't have it. The defense asked whether a canceled booking might have dropped out after five years. She held her ground. "We have records for every passenger, so it will still be there." "We do have every record." Maybe so. But a booking that exists in one company's log and not in the airline's is the kind of loose thread a careful investigation pulls, and nobody explained it to the jury on Monday. Her testimony ended just before the morning break.

▶ WATCH: CASE STORY PART 18 (PUBLIC) Airline Investigator Has No Record of the Nov 13 Flight the Defense Found ▶ CLIP (GO-LIVE TIME TO BE POSTED) Airline Investigator Insists She Has Every Record Even for Canceled Flights

The Marshals Officer Who Heard It on the Radio

After the break the State called Barrett Nelson, 33 years with Dallas police and, since 2009, a task force officer with the U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force. He was clear about what his job is and isn't. He finds people who have warrants. "My job is just to find." He doesn't write murder warrants and he doesn't run searches.

The State used him to put faces on the people around this case. He identified Kewon White, Jerry Johnson and Theodore Thomas from photos, then Devin Brown and Devaris Moore. He described the hunt for White: an early-morning hit on what he called "a GRC hangout" on Ramona Avenue, after which "everybody knew that something's going on," White moving "from couch to couch, futon to futon," and the arrest at a shopping center, outside a barbershop GRC frequents, with two phones on him that went to homicide. He told the jury the Tremendous Cuts barbershop was Jerry Johnson's, a spot where GRC members hung out.

▶ CLIP (GO-LIVE TIME TO BE POSTED) Marshals Detective Puts a Face to Jerry Johnson and Says He Helped Arrest Him

Then the State turned to Conway's arrest in March 2025. The Marshals in Frisco set up outside his gated subdivision, he came out in a blacked-out SUV, and they weren't set up to arrest him "in a safe and proper way." So they followed. Nelson told the jury that Conway "recognized the train" of SUVs behind him, made a U-turn on 35, ran a light and lost them. "He's he knows it's us," as the transcript has him relaying it. Conway was picked up later at an apartment complex with "no issues." And the SUV? "Uh it was bulletproof." A Yukon Denali, he agreed.

▶ CLIP (GO-LIVE TIME TO BE POSTED) Marshals Detective Says Conway Spotted the Convoy and Ran a Light to Lose It

The law lets a prosecutor show a jury that a defendant ran, because flight can be a circumstance of guilt. A jury may weigh it. Here's what the cross did to that. Did Nelson see Conway driving? "No, sir, did not." Was there a chase? "It was no chase." Did anyone report that Conway was fleeing or evading? No. Was he charged with evading? "No charge was with done with that, sir." And where was Nelson while this was happening? "I was in my office listening to it on radio."

So the jury got a car chase from a man who agrees there was no chase, told secondhand from radio traffic he heard at his desk. I'll be honest about what I think that was for. A bulletproof Yukon doesn't prove anything about Mo3. But it shows up again in the afternoon, in Thomas's grand jury story, where Conway pulls up to Jerry's barbershop in "the bulletproof one." Nelson's testimony doesn't support that story. It describes the same car, five years later.

▶ WATCH: CASE STORY PART 19 (LIVE TUE 11/3 8:15 AM CT) Marshals Officer Testifies Conway Lost Their Tail in a Bulletproof Yukon

Two Hours the Public Didn't See

The judge sent everyone to lunch: "So let's be back at one fifteen." What came next, the public didn't get. The feed carried no words from roughly 2:48 to 4:46 on the day's recording. Somewhere in that stretch Theodore Thomas was called, sworn and started his direct. Whatever the court decided about the immunity agreement Bright called "odd" happened somewhere in there too, or before it. When the sound came back, the State was already in the middle of reading Thomas his own grand jury testimony.

I'm not accusing anyone of anything here. Feeds drop. But I want it on the record, because this was the most important witness of the State's case so far, and the public has no idea how his testimony began, what he said before the impeachment started, or what the court ruled on the deal that put him in that chair. A trial is public so that people can watch the process work. On Monday, for the part that mattered most, we couldn't.

The State Reads Its Own Witness His Own Words

Here's what the jury watched once the sound came back. The prosecutor, Mr. Adams by the defense's naming of him, the same man who questioned Thomas in front of the grand jury, read Thomas passages from that February 13, 2025 transcript, one at a time, and asked him whether he said them. Thomas started on memory. "I'm saying I don't remember saying it." He agreed he was there in August 2017 when a man was jumped at a club by PMG and "people associated with" Yella Beezy. But when the State called that the start of the online feud, he said no, and gave his own version, about where Conway's father was from.

The defense objected again and again, and its objections deserve to be understood, because they go to the heart of what happened Monday. Impeaching a witness means showing the jury he's said something different before, so they can judge whether to believe him now. The general rule is that you put the specific earlier statement to him and ask if he made it. The defense said the State was doing something else: reading whole pages of grand jury transcript to the jury. And it made a sharper point. Thomas wasn't denying he said these things. He was saying he said them and they weren't true. "He didn't deny saying it, he said I made that up." A witness who admits the earlier statement has already been impeached, the defense argued, so there's no reason to put the transcript itself in front of the jury. The judge overruled the objection to State's 1203. On a later exhibit, 1204, after the same objection, the State withdrew its offer.

Then the instruction. At the defense's request the judge told the jury that the grand jury testimony "is not to be taken as evidence" of Conway's guilt and is "just for impeachment purposes." The judge repeated it, in different words, several more times as the afternoon went on, each time the defense asked: you can give it whatever weight you like in judging Mr. Thomas, but it is not evidence that Mr. Conway is guilty.

Now the question I can't get past. The prosecutor said something revealing when the defense objected to 1203. He told the judge it had been "made very clear" in the hearing outside the jury's presence "that he's going to deny everything." The State knew, before it called Thomas, that he was going to recant. It called him anyway, and then spent the afternoon reading the jury the story it knew he would disown.

There's a general principle in Texas law, and I'll say it as a principle because I'm not going to name a case I haven't read: a party isn't supposed to call a witness it knows will turn on it mainly to get his inadmissible earlier statement in front of the jury under the label of impeachment. The State's answer would be that Thomas gave it real testimony too, and he did. He's the one who told this jury Kewon White called him on Instagram, out of nowhere, the night before Mo3 died. He's the one who agreed he told White to get out of town. Those are live answers the jury can use. Whether that's enough to justify reading the whole grand jury account into the record, page after page, is a fair question for an appeals court someday if it comes to that. I think the judge did what the law requires once the testimony was let in. The instruction was given every time the defense asked. But asking twelve people to hear "$40,000 from Yella Beezy and Trapboy Freddy" read aloud, more than once, and then set it aside, is asking a lot of human beings. I've sat in a jury room. I know what people carry back there.

The Story, As the Grand Jury Heard It

Here's the account, piece by piece, as the State read it and Thomas answered.

He was in California with Conway on November 10, 2020. That night Kewon White called him on Instagram. White never called him. "He just called me out of the blue." It's bothered him ever since, and he told the jury why: "Because he never called me. And then all the speculative rumors. So then I got worried. But I never found out physically that he did anything." Did he know Mo3 was going to be killed? He'd answered that before, and he let the prosecutor know it: "I told you that a thousand times." The prosecutor's reply: "They need to hear from you, not me."

▶ CLIP (GO-LIVE TIME TO BE POSTED) Witness Says Kewon White Never Called Him Until the Night Before Mo3 Died

In the grand jury, he'd said he found out White had done the killing not from White but from Jerry Johnson, after he got back to Dallas. He told Jerry that White had been blowing up his phone while he was out of town, and Jerry said, in the transcript's words, that White had done it, and Thomas said he told Jerry, "you just put me in some S." The State asked if that phone call had put him exactly where he didn't want to be. "That's correct."

▶ CLIP (GO-LIVE TIME TO BE POSTED) Jury Hears Witness Told Grand Jury He Learned of Mo3's Murder From Jerry Johnson

He identified Devin Brown, "Chi Town," from a photo after his memory was refreshed with his grand jury answer. When the State pressed him on whether White drove a black Camaro, as he'd told the grand jury, he cut it off: "I'm saying I told you I lied already."

Then the heart of it. In February 2025, under oath, asked who specifically wanted Mo3 dead, his answer was Yella Beezy and Trapboy Freddy. "Correct." The prosecutor asked if he wants this jury to believe that was a lie. "Yeah, because hold on," he started. "That's a yes," the prosecutor said, and moved on.

The barbershop. In the grand jury story, after the California trip, Conway pulled up to Jerry's barbershop in "the bulletproof one," Jerry got in, and Thomas got in too. Jerry told Conway he needed his money back because he'd paid White for him, and he "don't got it like that." How much was White paid? "Supposedly 40,000." Where did it come from? Yella Beezy and Trapboy Freddy. Thomas: "That was a lie." The prosecutor: "But is that what you said?" "Probably." "I need a yes or no." "Yeah." And the judge, again: this is not evidence of Mr. Conway's guilt.

▶ WATCH: CASE STORY PART 20 (LIVE TUE 11/3 9:15 AM CT) Yella Beezy's Childhood Friend Now Calls His Grand Jury Story of a $40,000 Payment a Lie

One answer from this stretch the State will lean on, and it should. In the grand jury he said that after California he told White the heat was too much and he needed to leave town. The State asked him straight: did you tell him that because you knew what he had already done? "Yes." That answer came live, from the witness chair, and the jury can use it. It's the closest thing to a crack in the recantation that the State got all day. Notice what it does and doesn't do, though. It tells you Thomas believed White was the shooter. It doesn't tell you who paid him, or whether anyone did.

Why He Says He Changed His Story, and Why the State Says He Did

The State didn't just read the story. It built a case that the recantation is the lie, and some of it lands.

Thomas met with prosecutors after his grand jury testimony. For a year and a half, he never once said he'd lied. He first called his lawyer to recant on a Sunday afternoon in late August, the Sunday before jury selection in Kewon White's trial. He'd cried in the grand jury when he was asked about Jerry. By the time he recanted, his federal case was gone: he'd been put in a federal re-entry program called STEPS, graduated in August, and the case was dismissed. He still has a misdemeanor gun case and a state jail theft charge pending in Texas, and the prosecutor told him on the stand that before he recanted, the State had offered him a conviction and back time on the gun case "for your honest and truthful testimony." The State also brought out that in the last couple of weeks he'd done paid interviews with online outlets denying his grand jury account, and that he'd told "untruths" in them.

His explanation, in his own words: "I ain't wanna lie." He said he already felt he'd done too much lying from the start. He said he'd gone to the prosecutors two weeks before, and when it didn't move, he went through his lawyer because "I got tired of waiting."

The State put in photos of the three of them growing up, Conway, Jerry and Thomas, a baby shower, the October 2020 private-jet trip to Miami for Conway's birthday. Lifelong friends. The suggestion is obvious: men don't easily testify against the friend who flew them on private jets. Thomas agreed that kind of thing is looked down on, then said he was there to tell the truth.

I'll give the State this plainly. The timing of a recantation that shows up the Sunday before the shooter's trial, after your own federal case has disappeared, is a fair thing to be suspicious of. If I were on that jury I'd be asking about it. But being suspicious of the recantation doesn't turn the grand jury story into evidence. The judge was clear about that. The jury can decide Thomas is a liar both ways. That still leaves the State with no usable testimony that Conway paid anybody.

"That's Yellow": The Rainwater Video

The State saved one thing for the end of its direct, and it's the one piece of the afternoon Thomas didn't disown. Before the break, the prosecutor asked whether his grand jury account of Brandon Rainwater being assaulted by himself and Conway was a lie. "No."

After the break the State played Exhibit 1213, surveillance video from D Live in Dallas. The defense renewed its objections; the State said the court had ruled at a hearing in July that the Rainwater videos come in on the feud and the timeline, and the objection was overruled. On the screen a man is hitting Rainwater and chasing him. Who is that? "That's yellow." Was Thomas on the video? Yes, the first man behind Conway. And Rainwater was the manager of Mo3's company? "I guess so, yeah." "I have nothing further."

That's a smart place for the State to stop. It left the jury looking at the defendant's hands on Mo3's manager. That's feud evidence, and it's admissible for all purposes. It's also important to say what it is. Motive isn't one of the four elements. A beating at a nightclub shows anger between two camps. It doesn't show that anyone hired a killer, and it doesn't show money changing hands.

Facing Life: The Deal, on Paper

The defense cross started at about 6:14 on the day's recording and ran well over an hour, and if you watch one piece of this trial so far, I'd make it this one. It was a careful, documented portrait of a man with every reason to tell the government what it wanted.

May 2022: Thomas arrested with Jerry Johnson and others in a store belonging to Johnson, on a first-degree state drug charge, five to 99 years. He made bond. About a year later Johnson was arrested by federal agents on a drug conspiracy, and in June Thomas was picked up on it too. The federal system is different, the defense walked him through: no bond in a case like that, held at the Limestone County jail, up to 20 years on the conspiracy count plus a gun count that stacks five more. About 25 years, at roughly 85 percent served. He had a daughter who was about three. And the only real way out, as the defense put it and he agreed, was to cooperate and hope the prosecutors filed what's called a 5K motion, a request to the judge for a lower sentence based on the help a defendant gives. The defense put it this way: the prosecutors "kind of hold all the cards in that situation." "Right."

Then the jail call. The defense read him a line from a June 4, 2024 call, as it read it into the record: "they holding me just trying to make ... tell some shit on some bullshit." Thomas said he didn't remember saying it. Asked if that's how he felt back then: "Yeah." That they were holding him to get him to say something, as the defense put it, "on some bullshit." "Right."

▶ CLIP (GO-LIVE TIME TO BE POSTED) Defense Confronts Witness With His Jail Call Saying the Feds Held Him to Talk

Then the pressure went up. Over that summer his lawyer told him the federal prosecutors were considering RICO and VICAR charges, which he understood to carry life. He knew what they wanted. They wanted information on the Mo3 murder. "And they wanted the rappers." "Right." There was a deadline: a meeting on September 23, 2024 with his lawyer, the federal prosecutor and Detective Eric Barnes, the Dallas homicide detective on this case.

At that meeting, the defense asked, is when you told the story about what you say you heard in that SUV? "Right." "That was a lie." And the question that will be quoted from this trial for a long time: "But you told that story because that was the only way out for you. Am I right?" "Right." He agreed he never heard any conversation in an SUV. He agreed he didn't have that conversation with Jerry when he got back from California. "You knew that's what they wanted to hear." "Right." And the defense read back what he'd told Detective Barnes earlier this year when asked why he was recanting: he was facing life, and he was telling them what they wanted to hear.

Within days, according to the defense, his lawyer told him he'd be an ideal candidate for STEPS, the program that meant release and, on completion, dismissal. The defense said 72 hours. Thomas, on recross, said it was more like a week and a half. Either way, the order of events is the order of events: the story, then the program, then the door.

And here's the document I want every reader to sit with. The defense put in Thomas's federal plea paperwork, Defense 85 to 87, redacted, including a plea supplement he signed on December 17, 2024. The defense read the condition: he had to provide "full, complete, and truthful information and testimony." And, as the defense described the agreement and Thomas agreed, he was required to testify, for any prosecuting office, federal or state, against Markies Conway, Jerry Johnson, Devin Brown and one more man. If he didn't, the deal could be voided and he'd be back in custody, prosecuted on the federal case. That's how he ended up in front of the Dallas County grand jury on February 13, 2025. "So when Mr. Adams says he didn't promise you anything, you knew that if you didn't testify in that grand jury proceeding to what you had already told him, that your federal deal would be off, didn't you?" "Right." "And that's why you lied in the grand jury." "Right."

▶ CLIP (PUBLIC) Witness Agrees the SUV Story He Told the Feds While Facing Life Wasn't True

I want to be careful and fair here. The agreement says "truthful," and that's the State's answer: nobody asked him to lie, the deal only rewards the truth. Maybe so. But look at it from where Thomas sat in September 2024. Twenty-five years on the table, life being discussed, a deadline, and a meeting with the people who want the rappers. He tells them a story about the rappers. Days later, the door opens. Three months later he signs a paper that says he must testify against Markies Conway by name. Two months after that, he does. Whatever you think of Theodore Thomas, that's the sequence, and it's in evidence now in the government's own paperwork. If the State's theory is that this was all honest cooperation, it owes this jury something more than the word of a man who now says it wasn't.

Two and a Half Days, and Nobody Checked the Phones

Then the defense went after the story itself, using the State's own records from the morning, and this is where Alrihani's flights turned around on the prosecution.

The California trip was a record-company trip. Conway had recently signed with a label, and the label planned it and paid for the flights and the hotel. Promotions, photo shoots, interviews. It was supposed to be short, and after Mo3 was killed the label wanted Conway to stay longer. Conway's girlfriend and their children flew out a couple of days in and stayed. Thomas flew home November 20. The airline records show Conway flew back to Los Angeles on the 22nd.

So the barbershop story, the conversation with Jerry when Thomas got back, then the separate day when Conway pulled up in the SUV, would all have to fit between November 20 and the night of November 22. A two-and-a-half-day window. "Right." Thomas agreed that police use cell phone and tower evidence to show where people were. If the story were true, the phones could show Conway at a barbershop in Oak Cliff in that window, and if they showed him somewhere else, like Frisco, that would back up the recantation. Then the question that matters. In all your meetings with Detective Barnes or the DA's office, did anyone ever bring up cell phone or tower evidence of where you were, or where Conway was? "No."

Think about that. This is a capital murder case that rests, on the money, on one conversation in one SUV at one barbershop in a two-and-a-half-day window, and the defense has now told the jury, through the State's own witness, that nobody ever raised the phone records with him. Maybe the State has them and hasn't used them yet. Maybe it will. If it has location data putting Conway outside that barbershop that weekend, I'd expect to see it before the State rests. If it doesn't, the jury is entitled to ask why the most checkable fact in the whole story was never checked.

The cross also went back to the beginning. In May 2022, the first time Detective Barnes ever sat Thomas down, Thomas told him he didn't believe Conway would want to harm Mo3. Conway was too big for a local beef. Thomas called the feud "clickbait." Barnes took two of his phones that day, said he'd hold onto them for a while, and Thomas never got them back.

No Boss, No Orders, and "Expect to Get Paid Later"

The rest of the cross was aimed squarely at the elements the State still has to prove.

GRC, as Thomas described it, had no boss. "No one worked for anybody. We were all independent." Conway never sold drugs at those houses. He was close with only two people in that circle, Thomas and Jerry, because they'd known each other since high school. And Kewon White? Thomas is the one who invited him on a Sprinter van trip to a concert in Houston in October 2020, and lent him his own watch and ring. The defense put in the photos, Defense 88 to 93. Thomas told investigators Conway didn't know White. "Right."

Then the defense read him a passage the State itself had drawn out in the grand jury: that in the hood, if people think you've got money and you've got a problem with somebody, some will take that person out and "expect to get paid later," with no agreement up front. Is that true? "There are people that will do that." "Yeah."

That answer matters more than it sounds. Texas's murder-for-hire statute requires that the defendant employ another to commit the murder for remuneration or the promise of remuneration. An unasked-for favor, followed by a hope of reward, isn't employment, and it isn't a promise. The State may have another road: Texas law lets a jury convict someone as a party to a crime if he solicited, encouraged or directed it, intending to promote it. Whether the State asks for that instruction is something to watch at the charge conference. But on the hiring itself, the defense put a second explanation for White's act in front of the jury through the State's own witness, and it didn't need Conway to have said a word.

On the leave-town advice, Thomas softened it. He hadn't really said get out of town, he said, more like "you need to move around," because White was acting a fool. And he never saw Jerry give White any money. He told the grand jury that too: he had no idea.

The defense also humanized the man on trial, and I think it's worth noticing. Conway supported his mother. She didn't work; he paid for where she lived, the car she drove, the food she ate. He carried cash, bought clothes and jewelry with cash, bet on the Cowboys. The defense was answering the State's picture of a rich man with a reason to pay with its own picture: a rich man who paid for everything in cash. None of that is evidence of innocence, and the jury will weigh it for what it is.

The cross ended where the recantation began. Before he recanted, Thomas said, he called Mr. Adams and tried to see him. Why? "To tell him I lied." There were too many people in the room. And the defense read what he'd told Detective Barnes when he finally did: he was going through federal charges, he felt that if he didn't give them what they wanted he'd go to jail for something he didn't do, "so I tried to tell them what they wanted to wanted to know so I could get back home to my family."

Redirect: A Witness Who Now Admits Lying to the Government

The State's redirect tried to use the federal debriefs two ways, and I'm not sure it came out ahead.

First, the parts that hurt Conway. Thomas agreed he'd told the federal prosecutors and Detective Barnes he was sad Jerry ever got involved to help Conway, because Conway only cares about himself. He agreed he'd told them the "On Ya Head" bounty song was publicized by the record company to feed the feud. And the feud itself, he said, "wasn't a lie."

Then the State walked him through things he'd told the debriefers and asked if they were lies. He'd told them Kewon White personally told him he shot a man the transcript calls Boosie. A lie, he said. He'd told them Jerry had taken over paying White's jail books, bonds and lawyer because Conway stopped. A lie: "because I had no possible way of knowing that." Where did that come from? "I told them whatever they wanted."

Stop on that for a second. The State's own redirect established that statements the federal government collected from this witness, in the debrief that produced the payment story, contained things he now says he made up because they were what the government wanted. I understand the State's purpose, to show he'll call anything a lie. But it also put in front of the jury, from the State's side of the courtroom, the very thing the defense has been saying: that this cooperation produced the stories the investigators were looking for.

The State's best point on redirect was a good one. If Thomas really wanted to sell a story to get out of jail, he could have said he saw White get paid. He never has. He also reached out to Detective Barnes out of fear for his family after his federal paperwork showed up in the defense's filings. And he agreed he was paid for the online interviews and told untruths in them.

On recross, Thomas agreed the life threat was real and pushed back on the frame: his debrief "was about to let them know I wasn't involved." The STEPS offer came about a week and a half later, he said, not 72 hours. His case was dismissed, but "It wasn't because of that though." The defense's last question was about a summer 2025 scuffle in which Thomas supposedly told someone he only said that stuff about Yella because a woman was leaving him. "Never told him."

The judge released Thomas, subject to recall, released Bright, and adjourned. "Let's start back off at nine a.m. tomorrow."

▶ WATCH: CASE STORY PART 21 (LIVE TUE 11/3 10:15 AM CT) State Witness Agrees He Told Feds a False Payment Story While Facing Life

Where Day 5 Leaves the State's Burden

Let's go back to the four pieces, because that's the only scoreboard that counts.

The murder. Proved, in my opinion, about as well as a murder gets proved. Nothing on Monday changed that.

The hiring. On the evidence the jury is allowed to use, nothing new. The jewelry shows Conway had money and liked GRC chains. The flights show Conway, Thomas and Moore in Los Angeles around the killing. Nelson shows a bulletproof SUV in 2025. Thomas's live testimony shows that White called him out of nowhere the night before and that Thomas believed White was the shooter. None of that is a man employing a killer.

The money. The $40,000 has now been spoken in front of this jury, and the jury has been told it can't use it as proof. As a general rule, evidence admitted only to judge a witness's credibility doesn't count toward whether the State has proved its case. If that holds here, then on the payment the State is where it was on Friday, with the shooter's cash and no link to Conway's.

Conway's intent. No witness has testified to anything Conway said or did about Mo3 that shows he wanted him dead and arranged it. The Rainwater video shows anger. Anger is motive. The State has to prove a deal.

So here's where I come down, and it's my opinion, built from what the jury actually heard. The State promised this jury a murder for hire. After five days it has proved the murder and shown the jury a lot of money, a lot of travel, a lot of friends and a real feud. It has not shown a hire. The only account of a hire in this trial came from a witness who was facing life when he gave it, signed a deal requiring him to testify against Conway by name, and now says he made it up because "that was the only way out." The jury may not believe his recantation. It's still not allowed to treat the original story as evidence. After Day 5, the State needs a witness or a record other than Thomas's grand jury words to carry elements two, three and four, and it needs it before it rests. If it doesn't have one, the defense will ask the judge for an instructed verdict, the Texas name for asking the court to rule that the evidence isn't enough to go to the jury, and that motion will be a serious one.

My father used to answer people who asked how he could represent the accused by saying justice is a process. It isn't an outcome. It isn't a guilty verdict and it isn't a not-guilty verdict. It's the process working fairly. Monday was a test of that. A witness the State knew would recant was called anyway, and a story the jury can't use was read to it again and again. The defense got the federal deal into evidence in the government's own words. And the public lost two hours of the most important testimony of the trial. Mo3's family deserves a fair process that reaches a result they can trust. So does the man on trial. Whether the State can prove what it charged is the only question, and as of Monday night, on the hire, it hasn't.

What Day 6 Has to Answer

Court resumes Tuesday at 9 a.m. Central. The State still has witnesses sworn and waiting from Monday morning, including Officer Joshua Sims, a Detective Andrea whose surname was spelled on the record and then garbled, Elton Adamore and Officer Gerardo Rueda. Here's what I'm watching for:

Phone records. Location data for the November 20 to 22 window, for Conway, Thomas or Jerry Johnson. If it exists, Day 6 is the time for it.

The money. A bank record of the Frisco withdrawal the defense said the State's theory depends on, or any record that moves money from Conway toward White.

Jerry Johnson. He's the man in the middle of every version of the payment story. If he ever takes the stand for the State, Texas law requires other evidence tending to connect the defendant before an accomplice's testimony can support a conviction.

AA 2484. Whether anyone explains the November 13 flight that exists in the label's log and not in American's.

And whether Thomas is recalled. He's released subject to recall. If the State brings him back, I want to know what for.

▶ DAY 5 NO BREAKS EDITION (GO-LIVE TIME TO BE POSTED) Yella Beezy Trial Day 5, No Breaks Edition: Thomas Says He Lied

If you want the witnesses whole, the full testimonies are coming: Karim Ali the jeweler (live Sat 11/7 1:00 PM CT), Diala Alrihani with the flight records (go-live time to be posted), Barrett Nelson of the Marshals task force (live Sun 11/8 11:00 AM CT) and Theodore Thomas, all of it, from the grand jury pages to "Never told him" (live Sun 11/8 1:00 PM CT). And every Case Story Part of this trial lives in one place, in order: the Yella Beezy Trial Case Story podcast playlist.

Tell me in the comments where you land. Did the State hurt its own case by calling a witness it knew would recant, or did the timing of that recantation tell you everything you needed? I want to hear from people on both sides.