A woman known as Maya Millete’s “work bestie” returned to the stand today in the trial against Maya’s husband Larry Millete, who is facing charges for Maya’s murder. NBC 7’s Alexis Rivas has the details from court.
Maya Millete’s longtime co-worker and friend Kristeen Timmers returned to the stand on Thursday. Timmers detailed the conversations the two shared in the months and days leading up to Maya’s disappearance on January 7, 2021.
Larry Millete is accused of murdering his wife, Maya, and then disposing of her body, which has never been found. Larry has repeatedly said he’s innocent.
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Timmers testified about the frustration that Maya was dealing with as she grappled with the decision about whether she would divorce Larry. Text messages were shown where Maya said she was worried about the impact on their three children.
Timmers also told the court that Maya faced difficulties moving forward with a divorce because Maya said Larry was in complete control of the family’s finances, even though Maya was the primary breadwinner of the household. She said Maya told her that was one of the many controlling behaviors that Larry exerted over her.
Testimony from Timmers also revealed that in December of 2020, Maya had made up her mind to leave Larry, which resulted in a new set of behaviors from Larry. Timmers said Larry was threatening to ruin Maya’s career by bringing up affair allegations with her superiors again, demanding that he get 100% child custody, and also get ownership of their home in Chula Vista’s San Miguel Ranch neighborhood.
Text messages were also shown of the last communications that prosecutors said Timmers received from Maya. In the evening of January 7, 2021, Maya continued to express concerns about how the children would be impacted. She also said Larry was confronting her over the divorce, calling her cold-hearted and saying Maya was ‘throwing him away like he was dirt.’
Timmers finished her testimony, talking about the many plans that she and Maya made in 2021, including celebrating birthdays and a trip to the Grand Canyon. She testified that Maya would never just abandon her life, especially the children she adored.
On cross-examination, Timmers was asked about what she knew and when, concerning Maya’s reported affair with Jamey Laird. She said there were times in early 2020 that Maya denied the affair, but said she eventually admitted the allegations were true in August, but said it had ended by then.
That’s been part of a narrative the defense seems to be pushing, that even Maya’s closest friends and family didn’t really know what was going on in her life.
One major aspect of this case concerns Larry’s whereabouts on January 8, 2021, the day after Maya was last seen alive. An investigator with the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office returned to the witness stand to dive deep into the technical aspects of what they learned when police seized his mobile phone.
James Rhoades explained that many phones keep a log of detailed information about when they are plugged into an outlet to charge, when they’re unplugged from one, or when they’re shut down.
Through testimony and exhibits, he showed that Larry’s phone was turned on at 2:38 a.m. that morning and plugged in to charge. When it was nearly charged, he said it was unplugged at 4:45 a.m.
At 6:35 a.m., Rhoades said the phone was turned off and didn’t record any events until 6:35 p.m., when it was turned back on. Prosecutors say video surveillance from a neighbor shows Larry driving away in the family’s black Lexus SUV at 6:45 a.m.
The SUV is recorded returning home around 6:06 p.m. that evening. Larry has maintained that he took his son to a beach at Torrey Pines that entire day. Police say they were never able to confirm that alibi.
Rhoades also explained that phones don’t always know why they are shut down, especially if they suddenly lose power. But he said Larry’s phone kept a log when the ‘power down screen’ is shown, indicating events where the user manually turned off the phone.
Rhoades testified that the phone was indeed powered off on purpose at 6:35 a.m. on January 8, 2021.
Rhoades also resumed his testimony from late Tuesday, as he recounted dozens of messages that prosecutors said Larry sent to paid spellcasters. Deputy District Attorney Christy Bowles said he paid for magical charms and hexes to be cast not only upon his wife, but also the man she purportedly had an affair with, Jamey Laird.
Neither the prosecution nor the defense has refuted testimony about Maya’s affair with Laird, who was her subordinate co-worker at SWRMC, the U.S. Navy’s Southwest Regional Maintenance Center.
Through Rhoades’ testimony, Bowles has laid out a timeline that she said showed Larry’s desperate mental state. She said the messages showed him sliding towards darker requests as Maya came to the decision that she would divorce Larry.
Rhoades also continued testimony about an email address that was used to send whistleblower accusations to the executive director at SWRMC. Those emails said that Maya was carrying on inappropriate relationships with two co-workers and suggested she should be moved to another division.
Rhoades said he served a search warrant on that email address and said there was a great deal of information that linked the account to Larry. That included the fact that both misspelled the SWRMC acronym, contained similar writing styles, and had internet searches tied to financial transactions that they confirmed Larry conducted through other records.
That included payments that Rhoades said Larry made for auto body work and hypnosis services. The district attorney investigator then ran through a lengthy list of even more searches, which included:
Not long after this testimony, Colby Ryan began his cross-examination of Rhoades. It was expansive, as Rhoades had appeared over the course of several hours on three different days.
To start, Ryan zeroed in on Rhoades’ expertise with digital forensic evidence. At times, it got combative, with the investigator asking Ryan to repeatedly rephrase many highly technical questions.
Rhoades also appeared to be answering questions in a manner that wasn’t eliciting the kinds of responses that Ryan was seeking, resulting in questions being rephrased repeatedly. At many points, Ryan would cut Rhoades off with an objection, declaring his answer non-responsive, which resulted in comments being stricken from the record.
Ryan’s questioning also targeted the thoroughness and accuracy of the digital data that had been seized from cell phones and computers.
In one example, Ryan highlighted the data about Larry’s phone being turned off, which only included a three-week window of time. He suggested to Rhoades that it wasn’t a full historical record, that Larry may have commonly turned his phone off for other 12-hour stretches of time in the past.
Rhoades acknowledged that he could only analyze data that existed. He said the download of the phone only contained data from dates in December of 2020 through January of 2021.
Cross-examination of Rhoades is finished for now. However, the prosecution said it intends to recall him to the witness stand to present more evidence. The trial resumes Monday morning.