Photo by Gene Dalton | The Roanoke Times

Bob Shell is charged with supplying the morphine that caused Marion Franklin's death.

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Charges filed against Bob Shell in the death of Marion Franklin"

• Felony homicide
• Three counts of defilement of a dead human body
• Two counts of attempted sexual penetration with an animate object
• Attempted forcible sodomy
• Two counts of distribution of a Schedule II drug
• Possession of a Schedule II drug
• Distribution of a Schedule IV drug

RADFORD -- After four years of posturing and delays, the trial of photographer Bob Shell finally got started Tuesday as jurors heard testimony -- including a 911 call -- about the night Marion Franklin overdosed at Shell's studio, and saw many of the explicit photos taken of her that day.

Shell, 60, is on trial for felony homicide and 10 other charges in the June 3, 2003, death of 19-year-old Franklin, a nude model and his office manager. Shell is charged with accidentally killing Franklin by supplying the morphine that caused her death.

In addition to the homicide charge, Shell faces three charges of defiling a corpse, one count of attempted forcible sodomy for having anal sex with Franklin, two counts of attempted animate object sexual penetration for touching her anus and vagina, and several drug charges.

Photos of Shell touching Franklin were projected on the courtroom wall Tuesday, but it's disputed whether she was alive or dead when the photos were taken.

Commonwealth's Attorney Chris Rehak said police seized 617 photographs taken that day from 12:26 p.m. to 6:53 p.m., just 10 minutes before Shell called 911.

A jury of nine women and five men, including two alternates, was seated by lunchtime Tuesday, after a day and a half of jury selection. The trial opened with the pictures and testimony from Franklin's mother, Deb, Franklin's best friend Rosa Vomacka, and one of the prosecution's key witnesses, Susanne Coutts.

Coutts, a bondage expert, testified that she saw Shell spike Franklin's wine glass the day Franklin died.

Coutts said she had traveled from Washington state to Shell's studio on West Main Street to teach Shell how to properly tie Franklin for bondage photos, she said.

Their work was delayed several times because Franklin kept disappearing to primp, Coutts said. At one point, she said, Franklin walked up to Shell, held up her wine glass and "looked at him beseechingly."

"He took a dropper bottle out of his pocket and unscrewed it and squeezed a full dropperful into her glass," Coutts said. "She looked happy and walked off."

Shell's defense attorney, Jonathon Venzie, moved for a mistrial after Rehak asked Coutts where the "morphine" had come from -- when she had not said to that point that the bottle had morphine in it.

Circuit Court Judge Joey Showalter overruled the motion and told jurors to disregard what they had heard.

Coutts eventually said she understood it to be a morphine bottle, though she couldn't recall whether it was Shell or Franklin who told her so.

Later that day, Coutts said she asked Shell to squeeze three drops of the same liquid into wine she was drinking in the same glass Franklin had been using. Coutts said she wanted to try what she believed was morphine to relax her for the flight home.

Coutts is expected to continue her testimony today, and Rehak said he plans to play a 52-minute video showing Franklin bound the day she died.

Jurors heard first from Franklin's mother and best friend.

When she first took the stand, a nervous Deb Franklin told the jury, "My name is Marion." She quickly stopped and her hands flew to her face as she apologized.

Deb Franklin described her daughter as a fun-loving, good-hearted girl who loved the outdoors. The pair would hike together on the Blue Ridge Parkway, she said, and Marion Franklin would pick up trash along the way, appalled that anyone would litter there.

But Marion Franklin struggled with drug addiction for years, her mother said.

"She really wanted to get her life together and stop doing drugs," Deb Franklin testified.

She said she met Shell only once when she visited Marion in Radford two months before her death.

From the witness stand, she read a long letter Shell sent her about a year after Franklin's death.

In it, he described how a relationship between him and Marion Franklin had progressed, even telling her mother that Franklin at one point handed him a contraceptive.

In that letter and in e-mails to Vomacka, Shell said police were spreading lies about him. He said he loved Franklin and would never have hurt her.

His e-mails referenced father-daughter type themes. In one, Shell wrote of Franklin, "she's like a little kid" and he also wrote about how he was going to try to implement structure in her life.

In some e-mails he referred to people who supplied her with drugs as "bozos" and "drug-dealing scumbags," but in another he told Vomacka that Franklin needed "wine, Valium or something" to help her relax for photo shoots and that he gave her some pills.

In the 911 call he made at 7:03 p.m. the night of Franklin's death, Shell can be heard telling a dispatcher that in his studio is "a person who has taken a possible drug overdose" and is unconscious.

When asked on the tape if he could identify the person, Shell told the dispatcher: "Oh yeah, it's my girlfriend."

Rehak, however, said Tuesday that Shell and Franklin weren't in a relationship. Deb Franklin and Vomacka said Marion Franklin never mentioned having a relationship with Shell. And Vomacka read 13 e-mails from Shell on Tuesday in which he described being confused about the status of his relationship with Franklin.

But Venzie said in his opening statement that Shell's wife, Darlene, has e-mails that prove Shell and Franklin were romantically involved. Darlene Shell is expected to testify sometime during the two-week trial.

Rescue workers will testify later in the trial, Rehak said, that Franklin was "cold to the touch" when they were called.

It has been disclosed in previous hearings that there are four sets of the photos taken the day Franklin died, each with a different time stamp, raising questions about when they were actually taken. Venzie is expected to argue that the photos were taken much earlier in the day than Rehak said, long before Franklin's death -- and that police altered some of the photos.

Venzie also said in his opening statement that "there will be a litany of missing evidence" in the case.