Testimony concludes in Little Opry fire trial

Jan. 31--NASHVILLE -- John Boren called just one trial witness in his client's defense, a man who saw a gray car parked outside the front entrance of the Little Nashville Opry about the time an arsonist set a fire that burned down the structure in September 2009.

Harvey Farr of Paoli said the car was parked next to his pickup truck, and that it was the lone vehicle left when he pulled out. He did not see the truck driven by James Bowyer, the Opry's 78-year-old business manager, who claims to have left the Opry before 10 p.m.

Bowyer is on trial for arson in Brown Circuit Court, accused of setting the blaze. Closing arguments and jury deliberations are set for today.

Farr had helped the house band, Goldwing Express, load up equipment just before 10 p.m. after the show was over the night of the fire, then drove next door to the Green Valley motel for the night. Just as he was getting in bed with snacks to watch television, there was a knock on the door. "He said the Little Opry was on fire and we needed to evacuate," Farr recalled. He got his video camera and shot footage of the blaze, hoping to sell it to a television station.

He said the car, "an older model, grayish color," was visible in the images he videotaped, before firefighters arrived and surrounded the building with trucks spraying giant arcs of water on the flames. But the 20 to 30 minutes on the videotape were accidently erased when being copied for investigators, so it was not available for jurors to view.

Farr's 20-minute testimony Thursday afternoon was the only evidence Boren presented. Earlier in the day, he and Brown County Prosecutor Jim Oliver and deputy prosecutor Mary Wertz haggled over a comment Bowyer may have made during a break from an interrogation by federal investigators a week after the fire.

Boren was upset that Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents did not record interviews during the investigation and instead relied on notes generated during the sessions. The interviews were conducted at the Brown County Sheriff's Department in rooms equipped with audio and video recording devices.

ATF agents Mark Geever and John Healey, brought in as part of a national response team in the days after the fire, agreed not to record interviews in the case.

Official reports, but not Geever's handwritten notes, included a statement the agents said Bowyer made in the hallway during a break indicating he may have been the last to leave the Opry the night of the fire. "He told us he left when the band and sound engineers did, and drove around back to, in his words, 'take a leak,'" he said.

"And we're supposed to trust your memory?" Boren asked. "Yes," Geever responded.

Farr said the band members and sound crew left right before he did; he followed them out of the parking lot.

Geever also said Bowyer told him that although there was no formal agreement, Opry owner Esther Hamilton had "hinted" she would pay him four years in back salary, about $100,000 total, when the Opry was sold. A sale was pending when the 2,000-seat country music hall burned Sept. 19, 2009.

Joel Abbey, an investigator with Liberty Mutual Insurance Co., which held the policy for the Opry, said Hamilton initially told him that when Bowyer started managing the place for her in 2006, she made it clear she could not afford to pay him. "If you're coming for the money, don't, because I just can't do it," he quoted Hamilton as saying.

But in a later interview, Hamilton told Abbey she thought it would only be fair to reimburse Bowyer for his time spent overseeing the business.

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