WOODLAND — After several weeks of hearing his name in court, jurors in the Samantha Green murder trial got their first look Tuesday at Frank Rees, Green’s onetime fiancé and the father of her now-deceased baby.
Rees was called as one of the first defense witnesses for Green, 24, who stands accused of causing 19-day-old Justice Rees’ death in February 2015 by swimming with him across a Knights Landing slough while high on methamphetamine and keeping him outside overnight.
Frank Rees. Courtesy photo
Yolo County prosecutors say Green did so in a jealous rage, driving to Knights Landing because she suspected Rees of cheating on her. Her instincts proved right, as Rees admitted having sex with another woman not once, but twice, on the day Green and Justice vanished.
“We were talking and ended up messing around,” Rees, 31, said of his encounter with a friend named Monica, who had sought a ride from Knights Landing to Woodland on the morning of Feb. 23, 2015.
The pair hooked up again later that day on the way back to Knights Landing, Rees testified, even as family and friends began to worry about Green’s and Justice’s whereabouts.
Green has offered varying explanations for her actions that day. At first, she told investigators that a friend of Rees, Kerry Falls, had sexually assaulted her near the slough. Later, she claimed Rees intentionally drugged her and orchestrated Justice’s death to “get me out of the picture.” A third story blamed Falls once again, that he convinced her Rees was tied up across the slough and needed to be saved.
While Rees confessed to infidelity, he disputed other witnesses’ portrayals of his odd behavior around the time of Justice’s death.
Although a Yolo County social worker last week testified that Rees seemed “preoccupied” and uninterested while his parents and Green created a safety plan to bring newborn Justice home from the hospital — where the baby tested positive for methamphetamine — he recalled being an active participant in the discussion.
Rees also denied telling Green she was a triplet, he was an octuplet and that Justice had a twin who was taken away at birth — all things Green told investigators he claimed on the morning she went into the slough, along with warnings of an impending apocalypse.
His reported attempt to score methamphetamine shortly after creating the safety plan, which called for a drug-free household? Never happened, Rees said. Nor did he recall telling a detective that he and Green were using meth “about every day.”
Rees became visibly uncomfortable when asked about certain aspects of the couple’s drug use — specifically, the rectal methamphetamine injections that Green said left her “in a haze” on the morning she went to Knights Landing.
“The subject matter’s just really embarrassing,” Rees told Yolo Superior Court Judge David Rosenberg as he struggled with his answers.
“Mr. Rees, we’ve heard everything in this courtroom. We’re beyond embarrassment,” Rosenberg replied.
Amid defending his own character, Rees did the same for Green at times, describing her as being excited about motherhood and “wonderful” with his four young children from a prior marriage.
“They loved her. She was really fun with them,” Rees said. Justice, he added, “was the most beautiful baby I had ever seen in my life.”
Questioned about the days leading up to his son’s death, Rees recalled that he and Green “got high together” late on the night of Feb. 22, “and then I passed out.” He woke up with a groin injury the next morning, leaving Green to take Rees’ other children to school.
The pair then ran errands, each of them driving separate cars. Both were supposed to drive to Knights Landing to pick up Monica, but Green decided to go home instead, according to Rees.
About 10:15 a.m., however, he got a text from her: “Babe, I love you so much. I’m on my way.”
“I was very confused,” said Rees, who tried texting back a reply and calling, only to lose his phone service because the bill had gone unpaid.
After the dalliance with Monica, Rees said he arrived home around noontime, where Green and Justice were nowhere to be found. He called his friend Falls, who said he’d seen Green earlier in the home’s driveway, and that “she disrespected me” by not offering him a ride.
By the time a Child Welfare Services social worker — tipped off about Green and Rees’ possible drug relapses — showed up about 1 p.m., “I was really starting to get worried,” Rees said. “I had no clue where she was.”
Despite those concerns, Rees had sex with Monica a second time that afternoon, he testified, but added that he “was in constant contact with the police.” By the next morning, Feb. 24, “I was a mess.”
It was a friend who notified him that day that Green had been found at Ridge Cut Slough, and that a search for still-missing baby Justice was underway.
Scratched, sunburned and distraught, Green was taken to Woodland Memorial Hospital, where she informed Rees over the phone that Falls had assaulted her in Knights Landing — a story she soon recanted — forcing her to flee with Justice into the slough.
“She was just trying to get away,” Rees said. When he asked what became of Justice, “she hysterically said, “He’s dead!’ … It was like the whole world came crashing down on me.
“She said he was really hungry, and she was trying to keep him warm, but it was just so cold,” Rees continued. “She was lost down there.”
Rees’ testimony continues this afternoon.
Also slated to take the stand today is Dr. Matthew Soulier, the defense-retained UC Davis Medical Center psychiatrist who concluded that Green was suffering from a “drug-induced psychosis” when she took Justice into the slough, and therefore was unable appreciate the gravity of her actions.
Prosectors allege that Green acted so recklessly that Justice’s death was a likely and foreseeable outcome. They are seeking a second-degree murder conviction.
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene