Silliman's Papers

Trucker’s murder motivated by lust, greed, fantasy
    Murder, conspiracy charges against victim’s wife, police officer go to grand jury

By Daniel Silliman
Clayton News Daily, July 13, 2007



The 49-year-old was shot four times.

He was shot once in the left hand. It bled as he ran, leaving a 200-foot long zig-zagging trail across the parking lot of the truck depot in Forest Park.

Donald Ray Skinner, who had just delivered a truckload of fish, was shot a second time in the thigh. The .40-caliber bullet grazed his flesh. He was shot a third time, and the bullet pierced his liver.

He was shot a fourth time in the right eye.

Clayton County Police found him three hours later, on June 9, lying on his back in the parking lot. He was holding his keys in his right hand, Detective Scott Eskew testified in court, Thursday. The refrigerated tractor trailer he drove for Cool Cargo Carriers, Inc., was still idling and its headlights were still on as the sun was coming up on the scene.

“The blood trail allowed us to visualize Donald Skinner’s last movements,” Eskew said. “He was moving back and forth, back and forth. When he had such a large area in which to flee, all he did was go back and forth in a zig-zag pattern.”

Charles A. Smith, 49, looked down at his jail-issued sandals while the detective testified against him in the probable cause hearing. A military veteran and an Atlanta State Farmers Market Police officer, Smith allegedly told the detectives he didn’t say anything, when he shot Skinner with the state-issued, .40-caliber pistol.

He told detectives he thought he heard Skinner say a single word, before he died.

“He said ‘Why?’ He thought he heard, ‘Why?’ The word ‘why.’ But at that point he was already committed to killing [Donald Skinner],” Eskew said.

According to police and prosecutors, the answer is a mixture of lust, greed and fantasy.

Smith is charged with murder, conspiracy to commit murder, violating his oath to uphold the law and using a gun to commit a felony. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s firearms lab matched the shell casings, at the scene, to the gun issued to Smith.

The victim’s wife, 50-year-old Carolyn Allene Skinner, is charged with murder, conspiracy to commit murder and obstruction of justice.

Smith was in a romantic relationship with Donald Skinner’s wife for about eight months before the shooting, Eskew said. She reportedly introduced him to friends and family as her husband, while he introduced her as his fiancé. At some point, the detective said, Allene Skinner and Smith tried to buy a house together.

Allene Skinner was the named beneficiary of Donald Skinner’s $90,000 life insurance policy. Married for 17 years, her daughter, sisters-in-law and mother-in-law characterized her as “evil,” Eskew said. Sitting in the second and third row of the Clayton County courtroom, Donald Skinner’s nine relatives laughed and cheered, when Eskew said that, and were reprimanded by Magistrate Judge Richard Brown.

“Not that she was just evil,” Eskew continued. “She was also a liar.”

Allene Skinner wore an oversized, green jail-issued jumpsuit, during the hearing, and kept her chin raised and thrust forward. She never looked at Smith.

Eskew first saw Allene Skinner at the scene of the shooting, when she drove into the parking lot in a red, Ford F-150 pickup truck registered to a member of Smith’s family and, apparently not noticing the marked patrol car and uniformed officer, walked to the tractor trailer and climbed inside.

When Eskew went to the insurance company to look at the policy on Donald Skinner, he said, Allene Skinner was sitting in the waiting room. Family members told detectives she had previously asked them to help her kill her husband.

Smith, an officer at the Farmers Market for three years and for the Jonesboro Police Department before that, told police she had encouraged him to murder Donald Skinner.

She had, Smith told police, told him a long, involved story about how she was working for the Drug Enforcement Administration, and was “mixed into something. She was mixed up with some important people, some bad people,” Eskew said. Smith told detectives Allene Skinner had told him she was going to get killed by the “important people” and “bad people,” because her husband had found out something and had been talking about it. If she was going to remain safe, she allegedly said, her husband would have to be killed.

Eskew described the story as “a fantasy that only a fool would believe. A fool in love would believe it.”

Malcolm Wells, Allene Skinner’s defense attorney, found the story beyond belief.

“It defies belief, unless we’re not in Clayton County, Ga., but in an episode of ‘Miami Vice,’” Wells said. “That’s the story he gave you? He never mentioned the insurance money or anything? He said he killed [Donald Skinner] to save her from the D.E.A.?”

Smith’s attorney, Joe Roberto, did not deny Smith shot Donald Skinner to death, but questioned the detective about Allene Skinner’s character.

Wells argued, before the judge, that the characterization of Allene Skinner as “evil,” was understandable, given the family’s grief, but unsupported by the facts. He argued the woman’s affair with the police officer wasn’t sufficient evidence to support the charges against her. “One thing is clear, [Smith] killed him for her, not that she asked him too. The only person we know is evil is the ‘trigger man,’” he said.

Allene Skinner, listening to the closing arguments, looked at her lawyer and cried.

The case was bound over to Superior Court, where Smith and Allene Skinner will face possible indictment by a grand jury. A bond hearing is set for Friday at 9 a.m.