The $40,000 and the Bills That Don't Match

Melvin Noble was a Dallas rapper the world knew as Mo3, and on the morning of November 11, 2020 he was shot and killed on Interstate 35, chased from his own car in broad daylight. The man the State says pulled the trigger, Kewon White, has already been convicted. That part of this story has a verdict.

This trial is about the part that does not. The State of Texas says Markies Conway, the rapper Yella Beezy, paid for that killing. The defense says the whole thing is circumstantial: a rap feud, some bank slips and some cell towers, stitched together by people who needed a story. For four court days, from Tuesday through Friday, the State laid out what it calls the money trail. It took the jury from a $40,000 withdrawal slip at a Chase branch in Frisco, through the phones of the men it says carried the cash, all the way to the backpack Kewon White was arrested with.

And on Friday afternoon, the State's own lead detective sat on the witness stand and agreed, bill by bill, that almost none of the cash in that backpack could have come out of that withdrawal.

I want to walk you through how the State built this, piece by piece, because you can't see what broke on Friday unless you see what was built on Tuesday. I am going to tell you where I think it stands. I'll also tell you where I could be wrong.

What Texas actually has to prove

Start with the charge, because a trial is about the charge and nothing else. Markies Conway is charged with capital murder. In Texas, one of the ways an ordinary murder becomes capital murder is money: a person who hires someone else to kill, paying them or promising to pay them, is guilty of capital murder the same as the person who fired the gun. So the State has two things to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. First, that Mo3 was intentionally killed. Second, that Conway employed the killer to do it for pay or the promise of pay.

The first element is barely contested anymore. The second is the entire trial. Nobody has testified that Conway fired a gun on I-35. The State's own evidence puts his phone in California that day. So everything you are about to read is about one question: did the money that moved through this case come from Markies Conway, and was it paid for a killing?

That is the question I want you holding for the next four days of testimony. Not who killed Mo3. Whether the State has proved who paid.

The cop he paid, and the cop at his bedside

Day 6 opened with a Dallas police officer who spent six years on Markies Conway's payroll. Officer Nicholas Brooks works the horse patrol now. From about 2019 into October 2025 he ran Conway's off-duty security, the kind of arrangement Dallas lets its officers make with private clients, registered with the department and paid at a privately negotiated rate. The State put up his text thread with Conway and walked the jury to the morning of November 11, 2020.

Brooks heard about the I-35 shooting around 11:30 that morning and texted Conway. Conway wrote back that he was fine and asked what was going on. Brooks told him to call. Why reach out at all? Because Conway was from Oak Cliff, because he was a rapper, and because there was a dispute among several of them. Brooks wanted to know whether Conway had done the shooting or been the one shot. On the phone Conway told him he was in California. Did that settle it for Brooks? "In that moment, yes."

The State's real point came next. Not one word of those texts, or that call, ever reached Detective Eric Barnes or anyone in Dallas homicide in 2020. Over a relevance objection, the State asked Brooks whether he wished he had handed it over. "Absolutely."

Then the defense stood up and turned the State's witness into a character witness. Brooks reached out to Conway first, not the other way around. He set Conway up on Zelle. He ran security for a title fight in Arlington. He invited Conway to his wedding. He called him a pleasant human being. And the man the State keeps calling Conway's associate, Trapboy Freddy, has never been arrested or indicted for this case.

CASE STORY PT 22 · DAY 6 Detective Says Conway Wouldn't Press Charges Over His Rap Portfolio

The second witness took the jury back two years. At about 3:30 in the morning on October 14, 2018, on State Highway 121, a minivan pulled alongside a white Mercedes with its sliding door open, and tollway cameras caught what looked like muzzle flashes. Conway, driving the Mercedes, was hit in the leg, the abdomen, the chest and the elbow. Lewisville detective Sean Dority worked that shooting. Toll records led him to the minivan's owner, Sean Griffin, and the State had Dority confirm that Griffin was Mo3's bodyguard.

The jury watched the hospital interview. Dority raised "some beef between Oak Cliff and South Side," told Conway he had the shooting on camera, and laid it out: "If you don't press charges, I can't continue." And then: "I get the whole street justice thing, and you guys don't want to be snitches." Conway never pressed charges. His reason, as Dority remembered it: "it wouldn't be good for my portfolio."

CLIP · DAY 6 Detective Tells Wounded Conway He Can't Investigate Unless He Presses Charges

Here is the thing I want you to notice about the cross. Dority agreed that he was the one who raised the Oak Cliff history in that hospital room, not Conway, and that he got it from another detective. Conway said he was looking at his phone when he was hit and had no idea who fired. Dority believed him. The $6,400 found in the car went back to him. And the 2018 shooting is still unsolved.

So what did the State get out of its first morning? Motive. A man who was shot at from a vehicle owned by Mo3's bodyguard, who would not help the police, and whose own security officer feared on the morning of the killing that he might be involved. That is a real feud with real bullets on both sides. What it does not give the State is an agreement, a payment, or a hire. Motive is a reason somebody might want something. It is not proof that he paid for it.

CLIP · DAY 6 Conway's Cop Bodyguard Testifies He Wanted to Know if Conway Was the Shooter CLIP · DAY 6 Jury Sees Body Cam of Detective Questioning Conway in His Hospital Bed

Eleven phones, and no time machine

The rest of Day 6 belonged to FBI Special Agent Taylor Page, a member of the Bureau's cellular analysis team, and he is the most honest expert I have watched in this trial. Before a single map went up, he told the jury exactly what his maps can't do. The eleven phone numbers in his report have names on them, but "I don't have any personal knowledge of who is using what phone." The names and addresses came from the investigators. "I was not there, I don't have a time machine, I can't go back and tell you this person was absolutely holding that phone at this time."

Hold onto that, because everything the State built on Day 6 sits on top of it.

CASE STORY PT 23 · DAY 6 FBI Agent Places Conway's Phone at DFW Airport the Day Mo3 Died

The maps started with travel. The phone the investigators attributed to Conway flew to Miami in October 2020 alongside the phone attributed to Jerry Johnson, his friend since high school. At Halloween, Conway's phone and Kewon White's phone went down to Houston together and came back at essentially the same time. Page was careful: different carriers, and he was not saying the two men shared a car. On November 10, Conway's phone went through DFW Airport and landed in West Hollywood, and it stayed in California until November 20.

CLIP · DAY 6 FBI Agent Maps Conway and Kewon White's Phones From Dallas to Houston and Back

Then the morning of the killing, and this was the strongest stretch the State has had. Page explained timing advance, the network's own measurement of how far a phone is from a tower, and with it he put White's phone near Jocelyn Jackson's apartment all night, the apartment where Mo3 had been. White's phone and the phone attributed to Devin Brown Jr., the man known as Chicago, traded more calls on November 10 and 11 than in the whole six weeks before. At 11:54 a.m., Brown's phone called Jerry Johnson's. At 11:57 and 11:58, White's phone was "effectively on top of" the spot where Mo3 died. Mo3's own phone took its last call at 11:55.

CASE STORY PT 24 · DAY 6 FBI Agent Tracks Kewon White's Phone to the Mo3 Crime Scene at 11:58 CLIP · DAY 6 FBI Agent Traces an 11:54 Call to Jerry Johnson Minutes Before Mo3's Murder

For the killing itself, that is a minute-by-minute map, and read with White's conviction it is powerful. For Conway it is a different story. The State's link to him came on November 20, the day his phone came home. It landed at DFW, went to a Cadillac dealer in Fort Worth, and then to a tower serving the Chase branch in Frisco at 3:44 p.m., where the State showed a withdrawal slip for $40,000. That is the same figure a cooperator named Theodore Thomas gave the grand jury as the price of the killing. That night, White's calls moved from Brown to Johnson. Two days later Johnson's phone was near Conway's house.

That is the State's theory drawn in cell towers. And the State closed its direct with two answers it may not have wanted. Did Page ever see Conway's phone talk to Brown or White? "No, sir." And the last time Conway's phone touched a tower near the barbershop at the center of Thomas's story was November 3, before the killing.

The defense's cross is where Day 6 turned. The November 3 barbershop hit was not in Page's report. It was "more of a spot check, if you will," a request that came in after the fact, and he kept no notes. Who chose what he mapped? The prosecution. "I'm given kind of some right and left guideways to start an analysis." During the trial he ran exactly two checks for the State: did White's phone ever talk to Conway's, and did Brown's. Both came back negative.

And then the answer that the rest of this article keeps coming back to. Theodore Thomas told the grand jury that after the California trip, Conway sat in an SUV in front of the barbershop in South Dallas and talked about the killing. From the afternoon of November 20 through November 22, Page said, "that phone never touched towers that were near that barbershop on those dates." He gave the fair caveat, that a man can leave his phone at home. But he agreed the phone records cannot corroborate Thomas's story. Asked whether that made Thomas a liar, the FBI agent gave the most careful non-answer of the week: "I'm not sure if I'm tracking who's lying."

CASE STORY PT 25 · DAY 6 FBI Agent Says Conway's Phone Never Went Near the Barbershop Nov 20-22

One stretch of that cross helped the State, and I want to give it its due. Walking Devin Brown Jr.'s phone minute by minute, the defense got Page to say it "absolutely left" Brown's residence between 12:20 and 12:24 and was effectively on top of the scene at 12:30, about half an hour after the shooting. The defense put in video of a Dodge Challenger at the Ramona house on November 9 and November 11, with a man getting out who is "consistent with" Brown. That is a defense lawyer building an alternative suspect, and it puts Brown closer to the scene. It does not move Conway one inch closer, and Page agreed the three-hour stretch of that afternoon was never mapped at all because nobody asked him to.

On redirect the State made its fair points. It was "a big ask" to map selected days; a full month would run thousands of pages. A second agent peer reviewed it. People carry more than one phone. And after the killing, the volume of calls between White and Johnson "substantially increased." All true. None of it puts Conway at the barbershop, and none of it shows Conway's phone reaching the shooter.

NO BREAKS · DAY 6 Yella Beezy Trial Day 6, No Breaks Edition: Cop Bodyguard, Phone Maps

A cooperator who heard it from the shooter

Day 7 opened with the kind of witness every murder-for-hire case leans on and every defense lawyer is built to take apart. Cedric Bradley grew up with these men, rapped in GRC, the group out of Lancaster High, and now sits in federal custody waiting on a sentence that could reach 30 years. Before the jury even came in, both sides worked out how his sealed federal deal would be put in front of them. The State did the smart thing and put the deal on the table first.

Bradley explained why he was talking now. "Where I come from, we had a no snitch rule, no talk to the police rule," and he said everyone else broke it first. What does he hope to get? "To get a sentence reduction."

Then the story. Bradley said he was in a jail in Tuscaloosa the night Mo3 died. Later, at a house on Fernwood, White dropped by unannounced, asked for some weed, sat on the couch and picked up a gun Bradley had there. White said it was small, but not smaller than the Draco he had, and when he got his money he was going to get another one. Bradley asked what money. White, by Bradley's account, said "he was the one that did the work to the rapper on the freeway." What does work mean? "I mean like killed him." Then White broke down the shooting, the car, the shots, the chase.

CASE STORY PT 26 · DAY 7 Jailed Cooperator Says Kewon White Told Him He Did the Work on Mo3

Read what Bradley said next carefully, because it cuts in a direction the State may not love. Bradley said his reaction was that White had done all that and hadn't gotten any money, and that was not how business is supposed to go: you get paid something first. White, he said, was tripping over the money and was going to get paid regardless, and if he didn't, somebody was going to be next. That is a story about a shooter who had not been paid. It does not name who White expected the money from in anything Bradley said White told him that day. When the State asked who had a beef with Mo3, Bradley named "Yellow and Freddie." That is a feud. It is not White saying Conway hired him.

And the cross was brutal. In his 2024 proffer, the report says Bradley told federal agents he knew nothing about Mo3's murder and called White "a crash out." Year by year, the defense walked him through it: he never told this story until 2026, and no one else was in the room to hear it. A $400,000 house, a backpack of cash and a GRC chain came out of his own arrest.

The defense also made sure the jury heard what Bradley still has hanging over him beyond the federal case: a probation matter in Kaufman County that could bring life. Every reason a man could have to give a prosecutor what the prosecutor wants was laid on the table, one after another, and the jury now knows all of them. A cooperator is not a liar because he has a reason to cooperate. But a juror is entitled to ask why a story that only one man heard, from a man he says confessed to him, surfaced only after the deal.

The State's redirect was short and it was good. The plea agreement was filed June 25, 2026, and his first sit-down with this prosecutor was July 10. The deal came before the information. Has the federal government ever asked him to lie? "No." The State of Texas? "No." Does admitting his own violations help him? "Hurts." I'll give the State that: the paper sequence is what it says it is. But the benefit of cooperating comes at sentencing, and Bradley has not been sentenced. A deal can be signed first and the reward can still be waiting at the end.

CASE STORY PT 27 · DAY 7 Cooperator Agrees His Plea Deal Was Filed Before He Gave Any Information

The analyst who could not say where the money went

Then the State brought in the person who was supposed to make the money make sense. Deanna Davenport is a forensic financial analyst for the Dallas County District Attorney's Office, with an MBA, a fraud examiner certification, and eight prior trials as an expert. She read the jury a full year of Conway's Chase records. About $1.447 million came in during 2020. Cash withdrawals were the biggest way money went out, and every one of them came over a teller's counter.

She started from November 11 and worked outward, and two withdrawals jumped off her chart: $40,000 on October 23 and $40,000 on November 20, double the next largest. The October one came the day after Conway's birthday, before the Miami trip, and four days later $30,000 went back into the same branch. The November one was counted out in hundreds and fifties at 3:41 p.m. The State's point was the pattern: earlier withdrawals followed deposits, and nothing came back after November.

CASE STORY PT 28 · DAY 7 Financial Analyst Flags Two $40,000 Cash Withdrawals by Conway in 2020

But early in her direct, the State asked the question it had to ask, and she answered it the only honest way. Who got the cash, and what was it spent on? "No, I'm not able to determine that."

The defense spent its cross making sure the jury heard that again. Looking through a keyhole can give you tunnel vision, counsel suggested, and she agreed. About 35 percent of the money went out as cash. "I can't tell you where the money went." And on the State's own redirect, asked straight out whether that money paid for a murder: "I have no idea how the money was used."

Then the defense put the size of the number in front of the jury. "Forty thousand dollars for someone that's a millionaire is not a big deal," counsel put to her; the State objected, and counsel himself conceded it was "kind of a bad question the way I phrase it." Fair enough as a question. As an argument it will be back in closing, and it is a real one. If a man pulls large sums in cash all year, is the largest one a payment, or just the largest one?

I want to be fair to the State here, because this witness did one real thing for it. She showed the jury that November 20 sits in a pattern of its own: a large cash pull with no deposit before it and no money coming back after. That is a fact a jury can weigh. What she could not do is the thing a hire case needs, which is follow the cash out of the bank and into anyone's hand. The State's own money witness ended her testimony unable to say the money did what the State says it did.

She also gave the State one more date. Conway's Zelle payments to Officer Brooks, the bodyguard from Day 6, started on November 17, six days after Mo3 died. The State wanted that timing in front of the jury. On Day 6, Brooks himself had told the jury he was the one who walked Conway through setting up Zelle.

CASE STORY PT 29 · DAY 7 Financial Analyst Says She Can't Tell Where Conway's $290,000 Cash Went

Detective Eric Barnes took the stand at the end of Day 7: an Army radio operator, 20 years with Dallas police, 14 in homicide. He knew both Mo3 and Yella Beezy before November 11, 2020. He confirmed Mo3's identity at the hospital that day and asked the charge nurse to keep the death quiet. And the first suspect named that night, through a call to the homicide line and an interview with Jocelyn Jackson, was Devin Brown Jr. Remember that name. The defense will.

NO BREAKS · DAY 7 Yella Beezy Trial Day 7, No Breaks Edition: Cooperator, Money Trail, Detective

A feud, set to music, read by a badge

Day 8 was Barnes on direct from start to finish, and it was the day the State asked a homicide detective to tell a jury what rap songs mean.

He started with why nobody was charged in 2020: "It was just tips and just history of feuds, but nothing that I could place them at the crime scene." That is the lead detective describing where his case stood the year of the killing, and it is worth remembering when we get to Day 9. Then the State walked a timeline back to 2017, and the defense objected over and over that Barnes was not there for any of it. The judge let the jury see it.

The jury heard "219," Mo3's February 2019 song, with the lyrics on screen. Barnes said four things in it stood out to him, starting with a reference to the tollway shooting of Yella Beezy. The defense objected that he is no expert in drill music. He answered anyway. Asked who Mo3 meant when he said "whatchamacallit," Barnes answered in two words: "The defendant."

CASE STORY PT 30 · DAY 8 Detective Says Mo3's Song 219 Referenced Conway's Tollway Shooting

Then the State played the full DJ Vlad interview from August 7, 2019, about 47 minutes of it, after the judge overruled the defense's objection. Conway walked Vlad through where the bullets hit him. Asked what he would do if the man who shot him apologized: "Ain't no walking away." He weighed what getting even would cost, and said he already knew that doing it would put him behind bars for the rest of his life. On karma, he said it comes back on the one who starts it. Asked about a song some called a diss at him: "Never heard it." And asked for the local rapper starter kit, his first answer: "The fake beef."

CASE STORY PT 31 · DAY 8 Judge Lets Jury See Conway's VladTV Interview on Mo3 and His Own Shooting CLIP · DAY 8 Jury Hears Yella Beezy Tell VladTV the Man Who Shot Him Can't Walk Away

Here is my problem with how that came in. That interview was recorded fifteen months before Mo3 was killed. The man he was talking about was the man who shot him. Much of what the jury sat through was about his career, his record deal and how the labels found him, and none of that is about Mo3. The State is entitled to show motive. But 47 minutes of a rapper's on-camera persona is a lot of persona, and the jury heard most of it with no limit on how to use it. Does a tough answer to an interviewer in 2019 show a plan to pay for a killing in 2020? That is a leap a jury should be asked to make on evidence, and the interview is not evidence of a payment.

The afternoon was the Rainwater assault. Brandon Rainwater, Mo3's manager, was attacked outside a Dallas nightclub on January 26, 2020. The jury watched the surveillance video, and Barnes said Conway was on it and that back at his car, "He says I beat him up." Rainwater sued rather than going to the police, and Barnes tied it back to the feud: "If people don't go to jail, then the feud continues." The State played a song Conway released five days after the lawsuit, then another he and Trapboy Freddy put out in May 2020, lyrics on screen.

CASE STORY PT 32 · DAY 8 Detective Says Conway Said "I Beat Him Up" After Attack on Mo3's Manager

The State also rewound to a photo of Theodore Thomas wearing a GRC chain, and Barnes told the jury what the letters stand for: "Get rich cartel." That matters because the chains are part of the money trail; the State says White bought a new GRC chain on November 22. But a chain in a photograph shows membership, and the State still has to show who paid for which chain and with whose cash.

At one point the defense pressed Barnes on whether he was giving facts from his investigation or opinions, and Barnes called one of Conway's own statements "untrue." Eventually the judge told him to keep his testimony in line. But most of it was already in. Ask yourself what a juror does with that. A detective with 14 years in homicide tells you what a lyric means, and a juror hears it from a badge. The rule of evidence the defense kept citing exists for exactly this reason: a lay witness can say what he saw and heard, not what other people meant. Day 8 tested that line all day, and the line mostly gave.

Houston, a flyer, and change in the couch

The last stretch of Day 8 got closer to the money. Barnes put Conway on his own Instagram video holding what he called "a large stack of cash," which the State tied to the October withdrawal. Then October 31, 2020, a Halloween concert in Houston, with Conway on stage and Kewon White right behind him. Was there any earlier evidence of the two men in the same place? "No, this is the first time."

CASE STORY PT 33 · DAY 8 Detective Puts Mo3's Shooter on Stage With Conway Days Before the Murder CLIP · DAY 8 Jury Hears Conway's Own Instagram Live Calling the Mo3 Concert Flyer Fake

With the jury out, the State fought to play Kewon White's jail call from Mount Pleasant, the night of his arrest. The State's description of what was on it: "Not given, not lent, but paid." The defense said it fit no hearsay exception. The judge ruled, "I'm not going to admit that call at this point."

Then the jury came back and the State put up texts from Conway's iCloud. November 21, 2020, Conway and Devaris Moore, the man called Trapboy Freddy: a line about "change in the couch." Over an objection, the State asked Barnes what change in the couch means. "Money." November 22, Conway texts "Hitting him now." The last texts carried an address, and Barnes tied it to Conway's home through his insurance card and his license.

Put those two rulings next to each other, because they happened within minutes. The court kept out a call the State says has the shooter using the word "paid," at least for now. And then it let a detective tell the jury that a slang phrase in the defendant's texts means money. I am not saying either ruling was wrong on its own. I am saying the jury walked out of Day 8 with the detective's reading of the defendant's texts and without the shooter's own words, and I think both sides have a fair complaint about where that line landed.

CLIP · DAY 8 · PUBLIC SAT 10:15 AM CT Detective Identifies Conway's Private Jet Trip to Miami on His Own Instagram NO BREAKS · DAY 8 · LIVE SAT 8:00 PM CT Yella Beezy Trial Day 8, No Breaks Edition: Lead Detective, Shooter Onstage

The chain, said out loud

Friday morning the State did what it had been building toward since its opening statement. Over objections that a detective can't give a lay opinion about other people's roles, Barnes laid out the conspiracy in one place. Kewon White "was a person hired to kill" Melvin Noble. Devin Brown, Chicago, gave up Mo3's location at Jocelyn Jackson's apartment. "Jerry Johnson was the middleman that facilitated communications between Kewon White, Devin Brown, and Markies Conway." And the defendant in the courtroom was the third name. No clear ruling on the objection was heard. The State kept going.

CASE STORY PT 34 · DAY 9 Detective Names the Middleman Between Conway and Mo3's Shooter CLIP · DAY 9 · PUBLIC SAT 12:15 PM CT Detective Testifies a Middleman Linked Hitman Kewon White to Conway

Shooter, spotter, middleman, money. That is the State's case in one breath. Barnes walked the jury through Page's maps again: Conway landing at DFW with Theodore Thomas, Johnson picking them up, the Frisco Chase branch "corroborated by the bank documents showing the withdrawal of $40,000." He admitted one hole along the way. He never had Thomas's phone records.

Then the Ramona Avenue surveillance video, the house the State calls Johnson's trap house. On the night of November 22, Barnes identified White in a multicolored jacket and Johnson pulling up after his trip to Frisco. He listed what White had that weekend: new shoes, new clothes, a new GRC chain with a down payment on a second, a gun from a Mesquite gun show. And at his arrest in Mount Pleasant that night, "Nine thousand six hundred and seventy dollars approximately." Why does that cash matter? "Because he was seized several hours after Jerry Johnson met up with Markies Conway."

That sentence is the State's whole theory of payment. Conway's money goes to Johnson in Frisco, Johnson brings it to White at Ramona, and White is caught with it hours later. Keep that sentence in your head. Friday afternoon is about whether it is true.

With the jury out, the White jail call came back. The State argued White was speaking against his own interest about himself; the defense said he never mentions Conway and was just complaining about losing his cash. The judge split it: the State could go into the bond-out part of the call, "but not as to you know, that paid" and "try and link it up to a specific individual." The words that would have tied White's pay to anyone stayed out. When Barnes tried to say White's November 11 bond payment, made the night of the murder, was itself part of the pay, the court sustained a speculation objection.

Two days before, and no reason given

Then came Exhibit 1228, and this is the piece of evidence I think the State is counting on most. It is a text Conway sent the mother of his children on November 9, 2020, two days before Mo3 was killed, recovered from his iCloud.

Outside the jury the State argued it as Conway's own admission: this is a murder-for-hire case, and the message shows the means and the ability. The defense called it undisclosed bad-act evidence, Conway "just breaking and puffing," with nothing in it about Mo3, and said it was never told the message would be used. The State itself said it found the text in hundreds of thousands of messages only the Sunday before. When the defense asked which rule the court was admitting it under, the judge said: "I'm not going to explain my reason."

The jury then heard Barnes read it. "We all told him, don't grab no gun." After a slur we do not print: "So miss me with the BS." The State asked Barnes what that said about Conway's ability to have Mo3 killed. Sustained. It asked again. Sustained.

CASE STORY PT 35 · DAY 9 Judge Admits Conway's Text Two Days Before Mo3's Murder and Won't Say Why CLIP · DAY 9 · PUBLIC SAT 2:15 PM CT Jury Hears Conway's 'Don't Grab No Gun' Text Two Days Before Mo3's Murder

Let me be careful here, because both things are true at once. That text is dangerous for Conway. These are his own words, not a cooperator's, about guns and people, two days before a shooting. A jury can take it seriously and the State will make sure it does. And it is also a text that does not mention Mo3, does not mention money, and does not mention anyone being hired, admitted over a disclosure objection, on a rule the court would not name. A judge does not owe a running commentary on every ruling. But when the defense asks the legal basis for letting in a late-found message two days before the killing, in a capital case, "I'm not going to explain my reason" is a sentence an appeals court will read. If the ruling is right, saying why costs nothing. If it can't be said, that is the problem.

And notice what the court did right after. Twice it stopped the detective from telling the jury what the text meant. So the jury has the words with no gloss. On Day 8 the same detective was allowed to tell them what "change in the couch" meant. I don't see a consistent line between those two calls, and I don't think the jury can see one either.

The story the grand jury heard

Before the cross began, Barnes put Conway, Johnson and White together at the barbershop on November 30, and walked the jury through November 3 photos from the Ramona house of White with a shoulder holster beside Johnson and Cedric Bradley. Then the defense's first opening came from his own mouth. Asked whether White's and Conway's phones were ever in the same place apart from November 3 and the Houston concert: "I don't have any any data on that." For a hire case, two dates in a whole year is not much of a relationship between the man who paid and the man who was paid.

The cross started before lunch and opened on process. Trapboy Freddy, the man the State says paid part of the money, was never arrested. Barnes never wrote an arrest affidavit for Conway and took the case straight to a grand jury. Of the 19 witnesses on his list, 14 were cooperating. And then Theodore Thomas: at Thomas's September 2024 debrief, prosecutors told him a federal racketeering case was under consideration, one that "can carry up to a life sentence." Only after that did Thomas tell the story of Conway in an SUV at the barbershop. He told it again to the grand jury in February 2025.

After lunch the defense took that story apart, and this is the part of the week I want every reader to sit with.

Barnes had Thomas in an interview room back in May 2022 after a traffic stop with Johnson, and he took Thomas's two phones that day and gave them back without downloading them. By the time he realized Thomas mattered, the carrier's two-year retention had run out. So the only witness who puts Conway at the barbershop is the one witness whose own movements can never be checked.

Before the grand jury, the FBI agent who first plotted the phones, Agent Sedwick, had already told Barnes that Conway's phone was nowhere near the barbershop during that window and was active up in Frisco the whole time. Barnes knew. Asked what he had that showed Conway at the barbershop on the 20th, 21st or 22nd: "I didn't have any." Asked whether, when Thomas told that story to the grand jury, he brought the phone records to their attention: "No."

His explanation was this: "I didn't have information that contradicted his story. The records stated that his phone was in Frisco. It does not mean that Markies Conway is not in front of the barbershop."

CASE STORY PT 36 · DAY 9 Detective Admits He Never Told Grand Jurors Conway's Phone Was in Frisco CLIP · DAY 9 · PUBLIC SAT 11:15 AM CT Detective Admits Nothing Corroborated Conway Being at the Barbershop

Read those three sentences again. The records put his phone in Frisco, and that, to the lead detective, was not information that contradicted a story putting him in South Dallas. I understand the point he is reaching for: a phone is not a person. Agent Page made the same fair caveat on Day 6. But Barnes also agreed he never developed a single other piece of evidence putting Conway at that barbershop. On one side of the scale, a cooperator who first told the story after hearing the words "life sentence." On the other, the defendant's own phone records, which the lead detective already had. The grand jury that indicted Markies Conway for capital murder heard the first and not the second.

A grand jury is not a trial. It hears one side, it does not have to hear the defense, and in most places prosecutors have no general duty to present evidence that cuts the other way. I am not telling you a rule was broken. I am telling you what the process looks like from the outside: the most important corroboration problem in the State's star witness's story was known to the lead investigator and left out of the room where the decision to charge was made. Asked whether the grand jury knew Thomas was getting into a federal program that later ended with his federal case dismissed: "Not that I'm aware of." That is how a capital case started. The trial jury now knows what the grand jury didn't, and that is exactly why trials exist.

Counting the bills

The second half of Friday afternoon was the money, and it is the most important cross-examination of this trial so far.

Remember the State's sentence: White was seized several hours after Johnson met up with Conway. The State's theory is that on the evening of November 22, Johnson picked up cash at Conway's Frisco home and delivered it to White. Barnes agreed he wasn't there and knows no one who was. "The evidence reflects that," he said. So the defense went to the evidence.

First, video from an Arlington jewelry store earlier that same day, "long before Jerry Johnson went up to Markies Conway's house in Frisco." White pulls rubber-banded stacks out of the same backpack. Three black bands, a red, a beige. Then the Mount Pleasant arrest photos from that night. Same number of black rubber bands? "Yes, and the same type of rubber bands, yes, same color rubber bands, yes, and the same number of rubber bands, yes." The only odd band, a green one, was put on by the officers.

If the money in the backpack at the arrest is the money that was in the backpack at the jewelry store that afternoon, it was in White's hands before Johnson ever drove to Frisco.

Then the denominations. Conway's November 20 withdrawal came out in hundreds and fifties; Davenport said so on Day 7. White's seized cash, as counted in Mount Pleasant, held 66 ones, 354 fives, 102 tens, 43 twenties and some two-dollar bills. One by one, Barnes agreed none of those could have come from Conway's withdrawal. Only the 28 hundreds "could be" the same. The Federal Reserve could not tie the photographed serial numbers to the Frisco branch.

CLIP · DAY 9 · PUBLIC SAT 4:15 PM CT Detective Admits Kewon White's Small Bills Couldn't Have Come From Conway's Bank

Barnes's answer was a swap. Johnson runs a trap house, money changes hands, the bills could have been changed out. Did he have any evidence of that? No. When the defense called it a guess, he pushed back: "No, I'm not guessing, I just said I don't know." And a few minutes later he went further than I expected. Is the money from Mount Pleasant consistent with money coming from a trap house? "Yes, consistent with that, yes."

Stop and think about what the State's lead detective just agreed to. The physical cash the State says was Conway's payment looks, to him, like trap-house money. It does not look like bank money. The bank money was hundreds and fifties. This was fives and ones.

The rest of the cross chipped at the meetups. Johnson's and Conway's phones were near each other in Frisco on November 20, "but I don't know that they met." Nobody from Dallas police ever asked the Clay Cooley dealership for video of the meetup the State says happened there. The woman arrested in White's car was identified by Titus County, and nobody from Dallas ever talked to her. Thomas was inside the Ramona house when White came in with the backpack, and Thomas never once told Barnes he saw White paid.

And the State's answer to the obvious question was telling. If Conway had $40,000 in hand on the afternoon of November 20, why not just hand it over? Because, Barnes said, the bounty didn't come only from him; the meetup was waiting on Trapboy Freddy's share. That is the man who, by Barnes's own testimony that morning, has never been arrested or charged.

The spam folder and the habit

The last part of Friday was the defense building an innocent story for Conway's cash, and then the most embarrassing moment of the trial for the investigation.

Page by page through Conway's 2020 Chase records, Barnes agreed to a year of big withdrawals before anyone was killed: $17,500 in January, $15,000 twice in March, $10,000 in May and June, $20,000 three times in July, $20,000 at the end of September, $40,000 on October 23 before the Miami trip. A record company wired him about $350,000 that summer, and his withdrawals went up after it. Each time Barnes agreed he had no idea what the money was spent on. The July withdrawals came out the same way November's did: "No 20s, no tens, no fives or ones."

Then a video Conway posted on Instagram at 3:14 a.m. on November 23, 2020: Conway dealing out what Barnes agreed looked like crisp hundred-dollar bills, the kind you get from a bank. The defense's point lands without any help from me. Conway's cash looks like bank cash. White's cash looks like trap-house cash.

And then the spam folder. Barnes subpoenaed Conway's bank records in 2022. The return came back by email, and he didn't recognize it was there. "It went into, yes, in one of the spam folders, yes." He found out in 2023 and was told to go back to JP Morgan Chase for the records. "I never did." The records weren't subpoenaed again until 2024.

CASE STORY PT 37 · DAY 9 · PUBLIC SAT 9:15 AM CT Detective Admits Conway's Subpoenaed Bank Records Sat in His Spam Folder

I don't raise the spam folder to make fun of a detective. Paperwork gets lost in every office in America. I raise it because the State's case for hire is a money case, and the lead investigator did not have the defendant's bank records in hand for two years after he asked for them. By his own account he "delegated" the full financial picture to others and looked only at the withdrawals. Then the State put on an analyst who could not say where the money went. The money case has been thin from the inside for a long time, and Friday is when it showed.

The defense also went back to the cooperators. At his first debrief, Cedric Bradley, facing a long federal sentence, "didn't know a thing" about Mo3's murder. His account of White came later, with no other witnesses, while he hoped for credit. Did Bradley ever say White was told he'd be paid to commit a murder? "No, he never gave any statement of that." Same for Thomas. Two cooperators, and neither one has said he saw a hire or a payment.

Devin Brown's reasons

The last hour of Friday was the defense's alternative, built around the first suspect named the night Mo3 died. Barnes agreed that Jocelyn Jackson, the mother of Devin Brown Jr.'s two sons, was seeing Mo3 in 2020. That Brown had assaulted and threatened her. That in September 2020, Mo3 posted a video putting his chains on Brown's sons and tossing hundred-dollar bills, which Barnes agreed was embarrassing for Brown and led to Brown's son's birthday party being called off. That Brown and Conway were not friends, had no contact information for each other and never spoke, per Agent Page's check of the phones. On Brown's means: "He has some money." Then the jury watched Brown's own videos: a money counter running hundreds and twenties in July 2020, and "several large bundles of cash" in October, about a month before the killing.

I'll tell you how I read this, because it is a real point and it is also a double-edged one. It gives the jury a man with a personal, public reason to hate Mo3, and money of his own, and no phone connection to Conway at all. But the State's theory already has Brown inside the conspiracy as the man who found Mo3. His anger does not, by itself, take Conway out of the picture. The State will argue both men had reasons and the money came from Conway. What the Brown material does do is answer a question the jury will ask in deliberations: if not Conway's money, whose? The defense now has a candidate the State's own detective named first.

At about 4:26 Central, the judge sent the jury home for the weekend: "You haven't heard all of the evidence yet." Barnes is still on the stand, still on cross, and the State has not had its redirect.

NO BREAKS · DAY 9 · LIVE SUN 10:00 PM CT Yella Beezy Trial Day 9, No Breaks Edition: The Detective's Spam Folder

Where I stand after Day 9

Go back to the two things Texas has to prove. That Mo3 was intentionally killed: the State has a conviction, a cell-tower map down to the minute, and a cooperator's account of a confession. I don't think that element is in serious doubt.

That Markies Conway employed the killer for pay or a promise of pay: this is the whole case, and after four days of the State's money trail I don't think it has been proved. Here is why, fact by fact. The withdrawal is real, $40,000 on November 20, and it sits in a year full of withdrawals like it. The analyst who studied it can't say where it went. The barbershop meeting rests on one cooperator who told it after hearing the words "life sentence," whose phone was never checked, and whom Conway's own phone contradicts. The cash on the shooter was, by the lead detective's count, almost entirely bills the withdrawal could not have produced, banded the same way before Johnson ever went to Frisco. The second cooperator never said White was hired. The State's own expert ran the checks and found Conway's phone never talked to the shooter or to Brown.

What the State has, and I don't want to wave it away, is Conway's own November 9 text, the texts of November 21 and 22 as Barnes reads them, the feud, and the timing: a large cash withdrawal the day he came home, phones moving toward each other, White's calls shifting to Johnson. That is a pattern. A pattern can persuade a jury. My opinion is that it is a pattern built on a detective's reading of texts, and that the physical evidence the State chose to put at the center of its payment theory, the cash, points away from Conway's bank. I can't prove Conway didn't pay for this killing, and I am not telling you he didn't. I am telling you that on this record, so far, the State hasn't shown me that he did.

When court resumes Monday, Barnes finishes his cross and then the State gets redirect, and it has three things to answer. Where is any evidence that the bills were swapped, beyond the possibility of it? Why should anyone believe Thomas's barbershop story over Conway's own phone? And if the November 9 text is the State's best evidence of intent, what rule let it in? If the State answers those with evidence, Day 9 shrinks. If it answers them with more of the detective's reading, the gap that opened Friday stays open.

THE FULL CASE STORY · PLAYLIST TX v. Markies Conway: Case Story Trial Podcast