A judge decided Monday there is enough evidence to send two defendants in a murder for hire case to trial.
Diana Lovejoy is accused of hiring her firearms instructor Weldon McDavid Jr. to shoot her estranged husband Gregory Mulvihill.
Diana Clark, the aunt of Lovejoy, said Lovejoy asked her about a year before the shooting if she knew anyone who could scare or kill her husband.
“Auntie, do you know anyone who could do that?” Clark testified.
Clark said she was shocked to hear this, and then told Lovejoy that “moral and ethical issues aside, it was a remarkably dumb idea and she would never be able to get away with it.”
Clark also testified that Lovejoy was scared of her estranged husband. She said Lovejoy told her Mulvihill had a mercurial temper and may have been sexually molesting their son.
On Monday, Carlsbad Police Detective Scott Stallman also testified. He had interviewed Lovejoy and McDavid after they were arrested.
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Stallman said when he first asked McDavid if he shot Mulvihill, McDavid denied it. But when Stallman said there was DNA that linked him to the crime scene, McDavid changed his story.
According to testimony, McDavid defecated near the shooting scene, used a towel to wipe himself, and then left the towel on the ground.
The bizarre shooting in Carlsbad involved a contentious custody fight and a mysterious phone call from a man with a deep voice promising documents the victim “would want to see,” according to testimony.
In the preliminary hearing, Mulvihill described the night he was shot in the chest along an isolated access road off Avenida Soledad in Carlsbad.
“He said they were documents I would want to see,” Mulvihill testified. “He wouldn’t explain further.”
His ex-wife, Lovejoy, faces charges in the shooting along with McDavid.
Carlsbad police said McDavid, an employee at a shooting range in Oceanside, had been teaching Lovejoy how to shoot.
Lovejoy and Mulvihill separated in 2014. A few months before the shooting, Mulvihill was awarded joint custody of the couple’s son. Prior to that, he had 10 hours of visitation per week.
If convicted, McDavid could 50 years to life in prison while Lovejoy faces 25 years to life.
According to the prosecutor in the case, Lovejoy is facing the lesser term because she did not pull the trigger, but was ‘vicariously armed with a firearm’ and was aware and participated in the shooting.
