Opening Statements, Family Testimony Open Spikes Trial In Hopkinsville

Shirley Bussell remembers Wednesday, December 8, 2021, all too well.

She was making a peach cobbler when her 35-year-old son, Stanley, walked in from a long shift at Martinrea — in need of a little reprieve.

A little under the weather, he fixed himself two bowls of his mother’s dessert and slurped a “hot toddy” she concocted — a family recipe of liquor, lemon juice, cough drops, honey, tea and a splash of vinegar — before answering a phone call.

The woman, Shirley said, needed urgent help with her car, and Stanley said he would come over and make an assessment before ordering parts the next morning.

“I’ll be right back,” he told her.

And that was the last time she ever saw him alive.

It was this, and many other opening statements and initial testimony, that kicked off the beginning of Commonwealth v. Bobby Spikes Monday afternoon in Hopkinsville’s Christian County Circuit Court.

For nearly four years, Spikes has been incarcerated and charged with, among many things, the December 9, 2021, double murder of Bussell and Candace Marcel — the former located in Marcel’s apartment floor, the latter discovered by the Trigg County Sheriff’s Office as a passenger in an abandoned car.

And, presumably, it was Marcel’s voice on the other end of that fated phone call.

Judge John Atkins, defense attorney Jason McGee and special prosecutor Blake Chambers are presiding over a trial that could last through Thursday.

During opening statements, Chambers used 35 minutes to put forth his entire prosecutorial “road map” to the jury, complete with stills of both crime scenes, triangulation maps of cell phone data usage of the accused, and several images of a car in question, as well as some security footage snapshots of Spikes shopping locally around the times of the crime.

McGee, meanwhile, said the case against Spikes is about “assumptions, jumping to conclusions and cognitive dissonance” from Hopkinsville Police Department Detective Robert Stucki and the Commonwealth — where a lack of DNA and video footage, as well as a plea deal from Spikes’ son, Kendall, could prove problematic.

Marcel’s best friend, Keala Smith, testified that the two had been friends for “more than 15 years,” and was “like a sister to her.” She knew Spikes through her, and she confirmed Marcel had been married but was going through a divorce while navigating being the mother of four children when she entered into a relationship with him.

Around Thanksgiving 2021, Smith said a breakup led to a big public fight with Spikes in Marcel’s home. He was packing his stuff up while everyone was in the kitchen “chilling and talking,” when an argument broke out, and Spikes punched someone in the face.

Meanwhile, Spikes’ neighbor — Veronica Moore — testified that she still has a text thread saved from November 13, 2021, which in part reads “I thought I’d moved us out tha’ hood.”

It was to family and friends, after she witnessed an altercation between he and Marcel.