Murder suspect tip-toes through questioning

Quick Facts: 

• Murder suspect Dinh Bowman claims he killed Yancy Noll in self-defense.
• Said Noll threw wine bottle. Police found no evidence of that.
• No witnesses back up road rage claim.
• Jury shown video from Bowman's computer describing how to shoot through car window.
• Noll was killed Aug. 31, 2012.

The man who admitted killing a stranger in a North Seattle shooting two years ago said he didn't think he could go to police, and that he needed to get rid of the only evidence that could back his claim of road rage.
 
Dinh Bowman told jurors that he was the victim of road rage, and that's why he shot Yancy Noll near the reservoir on Northeast 75th Street. He claims that Noll, a sommelier, threw a wine bottle out of his car through the window of Bowman's convertible, hitting him in the head.
 
Bowman tiptoed through cross-examination, in which a prosecutor questioned why he would throw away evidence of the road rage -- the wine bottle and a thrown water bottle -- that supposedly led him to shoot Noll four times in the head. No witnesses backed up Bowman's claim of road rage during the weekslong manhunt to find Bowman in 2012.
 
Prosecutors are convinced that Bowman prepared to kill a random victim, calling him a "student of murder" who collected files on his computer. Documents included details on how to become "arrest-proof" and a death dealer's manual that offered advice on how to kill people.
 
Bowman told the court Monday that he hadn't read that file, which was found on his computer during a police search.
 
Another document advised throwing away pieces of evidence at different times, something that police and prosecutors say Bowman did.
 
Asked previously in court why he never called police, Bowman said he didn't think they'd believe him. Bowman fired the fatal shots through his own passenger window.
 
A police search showed that Bowman searched for news coverage of the killing shortly after he shot Noll to death. And the night that he killed him, Bowman and his wife went to Red Robin.
 
A dent in Noll's car wasn't from road rage – it was there long before, his best friend testified earlier.
 
After the shooting, Bowman and his wife drove to Portland, where they had the shattered window replaced, and the manager of a Lynnwood tire store testified that it was odd that Bowman wanted new tires shortly after the shooting and that he wanted to keep the old tires to give to a friend.
 
Bowman didn't want his personal information on the tire store invoice.
 
"Shooting Yancy Noll was like a movie," Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Adrienne McCoy told the jury on Dec. 4.
 
Noll's defense attorney previously said the prosecution was "desperate" in its attempts to get additional files from Bowman's computer entered as evidence.
 
But King County Superior Court Judge Bruce Heller allowed more of Bowman's journals to be introduced after Bowman claimed that he killed Noll in self-defense.
 
The judge also allowed the prosecutor to show the jury how the massive amounts of information on Bowman's computer were organized.
 
The trial continues Tuesday morning, Dec. 9.

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