LAWRENCEVILLE — The memory seems to eat at Frank Wiley. He sat on the witness stand at the Gwinnett County courthouse Wednesday telling how 20-year-old Kayla Weil got restrained with zip ties, how she begged for her life as metal hit skin in a distinct slap. How, at the end, she wanted to talk to her grandmother. How he didn’t try to save her.
“I was scared,” said Wiley, young, trim and tattooed, fighting tears. “I lied to myself. I didn’t think it was real.”
His shaky sense of reality came partly from methamphetamine. He said he smoked it before the murder in summer 2013 at a drug house on Buford’s Cloud Street, along with suspects Cody Williams and Amy McGarity. The accused killers claimed they were angry with the victim because she stole from them, said Wiley, who faces no charges in the case.
Williams, 25, has pleaded not guilty and is on trial this week fighting the accusations. McGarity and a third defendant charged with helping hide the body on the shores of Lake Lanier are being tried separately.
Wiley moved away to Rabun County after the murder, he said, because he was afraid McGarity, who allegedly had gang ties, would hurt him or his family. One day in the car, his fiance told him he needed to do “the right thing,” and he soon called authorities.
Wiley’s tearful testimony amounted to the most detailed public retelling of the brutal case, one that contradicts Williams’ story of being forced at gunpoint by McGarity to participate in Weil’s death.