MAGNOLIA, Miss. (The Daily Leader) — Opening arguments have begun in the death penalty trial of a man accused of killing eight people in Mississippi in 2017.
The Daily Leader reports that a witness on Saturday testified that he saw Willie Cory Godbolt enter his in-laws’ home, get into a fight and fatally shoot a responding deputy.
Authorities say Godbolt then killed his mother-in-law and two others inside the home before killing four other people in south Mississippi’s Lincoln County.
Godbolt’s attorney Katherine Poor told the jurors that her client was trying to protect his family and believed his daughter had been inappropriately touched by a family member at the in-laws’ home.