One of the Dade County pipe bombing suspects arrested in December is on trial this week, and on Tuesday, the other one testified against her.
Teshena Renee Bates--she goes by her middle name--sat impassively by her attorney Tuesday morning as she listened to testimony from her boyfriend, who was arrested with her on Dec. 4 and like her charged with 13 felonies counts of possession of illegal explosives, but who made a deal with prosecutors and entered a guilty plea to lesser charges.
The boyfriend, Robert Christopher York--he also goes by his middle name, and is called "Chris"--professed undying love for Ms. Bates in his Tuesday testimony. He said his evolving explanations of how he came into possession of 13 pipe bombs--he first told investigators he'd found them in a parking lot where he worked and later admitted he'd made them--were due to his initial impulse to protect her and take the blame himself.
But in recorded interviews with a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent played to the jury Tuesday afternoon by Ms. Bates' attorney, public defender Jennifer Hartline, York seemed to have been eager to shift the blame onto Ms. Bates from the first, even blaming her for the initial traffic stop that led to the discovery of three of the bombs in his Ford Ranger after the couple had been through the Krystal drive-through. "She just had to have that hamburger," he said.
York, who was 56 to Ms. Bates' 36 when they were arrested, testified he made the bombs because Ms. Bates wanted to hurt a former boyfriend she told him had beaten and raped her. "A woman was a way of manipulating a man," he said.
The case is expected to go to the jury today.
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