Closing arguments in Granville County double murder trial to begin Thursday

OXFORD, North Carolina (WTVD) -- Closing arguments will begin Thursday in the double murder trial of Eric Campbell, 23, accused in the New Year's Eve 2014 murders of 73-year-old Jerome Faulkner and his 62-year-old wife, Dora, at their Oak Hill home.

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Prosecutors allege the killings were part of a multi-state crime spree and Eric was his father's partner in the crimes.

The defense has argued Campbell suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder after a childhood of abuse at the hands of his father Edward Campbell and that Ed is solely to blame. The 52-year-old killed himself in Raleigh's Central Prison shortly after the two were arrested following a shootout with police in West Virginia.

The state put a rebuttal witness on the stand Wednesday, forensic psychiatrist Dr. Nicole Wolfe from Central Regional Hospital in Butner, who evaluated Eric after he was charged.

Wolfe testified that Eric was aware of what he was doing when the Faulkners were murdered.

"There's no evidence that he was not able to understand the nature and quality of the act, meaning what was the purpose of the behavior and what was going on," she said.

Eric Campbell took the stand in his own defense earlier in the trial and testified to what he said was a manipulative and abusive father whom he was deeply afraid of.

In his testimony, Eric Campbell laid out in graphic terms what happened on that late-December night in 2014. How he and his father were driving through Oak Hill - they were coming from Texas where Ed Campbell was wanted by authorities; how they stopped to camp out and were going to go hunt deer with a cross-bow but instead wound up at the Faulkners' house; how his father knocked on the door saying their truck had broken down; how he heard a gunshot and his father came to get him; how the house smelled and what it felt like to see Jerome Faulkner on the bed with an arrow sticking out of his chest; how his father made him search through the Faulkners' office drawers looking for paperwork and money; and how the two took the bodies with them before torching the home when they left.

Granville County Assistant District Attorney Allison Capps has painted a different picture of Eric's involvement in the killings.

"Deliberate decisions, conscious choices," she said during opening statements.

On Wednesday, when Capps asked Wolfe whether Eric could have formed the specific intent to murder the Faulkners, Wolfe responded in the affirmative.

"I'm saying that he doesn't have a mental disorder that prevented him from doing any of these things," Wolfe said.

Campbell is the first defendant to face a capital punishment trial in Granville County in 25 years.