The case is a bench trial. The defendant opted to have the judge decide guilt or innocence. The trial is expected to last two weeks. (link)

HOUSTON TEXAS – Angela Davis told a gripping story Wednesday about receiving cryptic phone calls from her 12-year-old son and a strange woman, racing home on her motor scooter that stalled and then breathlessly running the last 100 hundred yards on foot to her north Houston duplex.
But after fumbling with her key, she finally opened the door that Christmas eve in 2010 only to discover that her son Johnathon had vanished seconds earlier.
Ominous phone calls
A half glass of cold milk sat on a table. Cartoons blared from the television and a computer game was loaded and ready to play. But the tin box filled with Tootsie Rolls left behind was what brought tears to Davis’ eyes and made it hard for her to continue testifying in the capital murder trial of Mona Nelson, the woman accused in the killing of her red-headed fifth-grader, Jonathan Foster.

“It was a family tradition to pick one present to open before Christmas,” she said, and her son had selected the candy from all the gifts, including a Wii game, that still sat unopened under the glowing lights of her tree.
But it was the ominous phone calls from a mysterious woman, initially to the meat market where she worked as a cashier, that provided Davis’ last contact with her son and a fleeting link to his abductor.
The woman, whom witnesses described as angry and using foul language, demanded Davis’ supervisors put her on the phone. The mysterious voice demanded the telephone number of the woman leasing the duplex where Davis and her son were staying.

Threatening message
One meat market supervisor, Lois Sims, testified about a particularly threatening message the unidentified woman left: “If you don’t get her (on the phone) now something’s going to happen. He (her son) won’t be here for long.” (read more)