Shawkey Invokes Pirates and Underwater Fences in Day 5 of Trial

Prosecutors continued trying to poke holes in the stories of Gary Shawkey as his murder trial moved into Day 5.

Shawkey is accused of luring Phoenix resident Robert Vendrick to Orange County on the pretense of a $1.2-million business deal with the federal government, then killing him on a boat.

On Monday, the jury continued its habit of laughing out loud at Shawkey’s bizarre explanations of his whereabouts in relation to Vendrick's disappearance and their business ventures.  

Shawkey, in taped interrogations played for the jury, tried to convince investigators that he and Vendrick were going to start a Chilean abalone, lobster and sea urchin farm in Washington and Chile. 

The taped interviews were conducted by investigator Mike Thompson.

Relatives of Vendrick, whose body has never been found, watched Shawkey on video telling investigators that, “maybe (Vendrick) was a homosexual and liked me. Maybe he wanted to take me out and show me a good time,” when he was asked to explain why Vendrick would give him large sums of money without expecting anything in return.  

Shawkey also says on the video that he had never heard of San Clemente Island or any deal with the government. The prosecution says this fictional government deal was how Shawkey lured Vendrick onto a boat to San Clemente Island to kill him on the open sea.

Shawkey was not aware at the time that police had already gained access to his email account with a warrant and found messages he sent to Vendrick about the fake San Clemente government deal.

Shawkey also offered different versions of his whereabouts after he got to California, and began to get agitated on the video as police pressed him.

In the almost three-hour tape, Shawkey is never clear whether he was camping, what hotel he stayed at or if he was in Long Beach or Dana Point in the days following Vendrick's disappearance.  

One of the strangest claims made by Shawkey was that he and Vendrick were supposed to go to Chile to build an underwater chain-link fence to protect an abalone farm from attacking pirates.

Shawkey said he met a man named Carlos in a bar that offered him the job.

Shawkey always told small bits of truth surrounded by lies, police said. In this instance, he did meet a man named Carlos who had an abalone business in Chile.

Knowing little to nothing else, police tracked down Carlos to verify the story. Although Carlos did exist, he never had a deal with Shawkey, debunking another story Shawkey told investigators, prosecutors said.

In a more tense moment of the interrogation, police described to Shawkey what happens to a body after it has been underwater, telling him it pops up as it decomposes and fills with gas.

When Shawkey compared the disappearance of Vendrick to that of Natalee Holloway, the American teenager whose disappearance has never been solved, police interjected and said the case reminded them of convicted killer Scott Peterson, who weighed his wife down in the water only to have her surface.

“I always am thinking of the victims' families,” Thompson told Patch after leaving the witness stand Monday. He walked over to Carole Vendrick, got down on his knee and shared a private word with her.

The trial continues Tuesday in the Santa Ana Central Justice Center.

Read the rest of Patch's coverage of the Shawkey murder trial:

An earlier version of this story misspelled Carole Vendrick's first name. Updated June 8.