Two people testified Wednesday that William George “Munch” Thompson confessed to each of them that he took part in the Homewood ambush that killed an 8-year-old girl, her father and a family friend. “He called me and told me he had killed some people,” Melissa Cox, 22, a friend of Thompson’s, told jurors during the capital murder trial of Thompson and Andre “Little Dre” Crisswell, 30, of Lincoln-Lemington. “I asked who killed my little cousin and he said, ‘I didn’t do that; I shot one time, and my gun jammed,” said Octavio Rodriguez, a former inmate who was in the Allegheny County Jail the day Thompson was arrested. Their testimony came a day after Brian Shealy, an eyewitness to the Jan. 25, 2002, killings inside Mr. Tommy’s Sandwich Stop, told jurors he was “100 percent sure” he saw Crisswell there, but “almost sure” he saw Thompson, 35, of Homewood. Assistant District Attorney Mark Tranquilli said today’s testimony will include the final two of his four “capital witnesses,” who he said could identify Crisswell as one of the masked men who killed Taylor Coles, 8, her father, Parrish Freeman, 36, both of Wilkinsburg, and Thomas Mitchell III, 31, of Homestead. Thompson and Crisswell face the death penalty if convicted. Cox testified she had struck up a friendship with Thompson about six weeks before the killings, speaking with him often on the phone and getting together twice. About two hours after the killings, Cox said, Thompson called and said he had “done something.” “I said, ‘What did you do?’ And he said he killed some people in Homewood,” she said. “At first, I didn’t believe him.” She said they never spoke again. But after Thompson’s defense attorney, Michael J. DeRiso, showed cell phone records seized by police, she admitted she called him several more times that night. DeRiso tried to paint Cox as jealous of other women Thompson dated, but Cox said she had no romantic interest in Thompson. Rodriguez, who said he was Freeman’s cousin, said he was working in a cell block of the county jail on Jan. 31, 2002, when Thompson was brought in. Rodriguez’s aunt had just told him during a phone call about the killings and Thompson’s arrest. “I said, ‘I want you to know that was my cousin you shot,'” Rodriguez testified. “His first response was he didn’t do it. Then he said he did.” During several conversations through a hole in a wall, Thompson said he did the shooting with two other men, Jabar Thomas and Andre Marshall, Rodriguez testified. He said Thompson told him they were aiming for Mitchell because he owed drug money to the other shooters. He also said Thompson told him Thomas would get rid of the guns and masks used in the ambush. Tranquilli told the jury that a man named Andre Marshall was in a state prison the night of the killings. Rodriguez said he told a jail guard to move Thompson to a different part of the jail for safety because several relatives of Freeman were incarcerated there. DeRiso asked whether Rodriguez had threatened Thompson. Rodriguez said no. Police, and some witnesses, have said that a third person waited outside the diner as the two gunmen went in, but he has never been identified.

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