The Pavilion

Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and the case I'm going to share with you today takes place in Mohawk Park in Tulsa, Oklahoma. According to the website visittulsa.com, this recreation space spans 2,800 acres and is home to swimming facilities, sports fields, a nature center, the Tulsa Zoo, picnic areas, and event spaces. I actually stumbled upon today's story a few months ago while researching a previous episode of Park Predators titled The Path. In that episode, I discussed several murders that happened in Tulsa in the 1970s. One in particular was the unsolved murder of Suzanne Oakley in late August 1975. Her murder occurred along the city's River Parks trail system, which is about 25 minutes southwest of Mohawk Park, and it was big news at the time. Today's case was equally as noteworthy back then. It happened just one month before Suzanne's murder, and those murders were not the only ones. I know the victim is different, the circumstances are different, and the ending is different. I knew the moment I read about it that I wanted to research it and eventually discuss it on the show. Because, you see, when I released my episode about Suzanne's story, there were a lot of listeners who lived in Tulsa who told me they'd never even heard of her story. And if my suspicions are correct, I'm betting a lot of those same listeners have probably never heard about what happened in Mohawk Park either. And that worries me. Because if there's one thing I want all of you to take away from listening to this episode, it's this. Even in well-traveled, popular urban parks, bad things can happen. And no city green space is immune to random acts of violence. This is Park Predators. Park Predators. About 8.30 in the morning on Sunday, July 27th, 1975, a woman named Grace Brightman arrived at Mohawk Park in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to set up for a family reunion. She was planning to have that event later in the day, so her early arrival was on purpose. She wanted to ensure that her group would have first dibs at one of the park's enclosed picnic pavilions near some boat docks. But shortly after going inside the pavilion she had her eye on, she saw something horrible. Lying on top of a quilt blanket on the ground, she saw a man was the bloodied nude body of a young man. He was dead, and Grace saw that his arms had been spread apart and his head had been severely beaten. She immediately reported what she'd found, and in short order, an investigation got underway. From the outset, the scene was treated as a homicide, and detectives quickly located some additional items of evidence that they suspected belonged to the victim or were likely related to the case. There was a pair of underwear and two shoes sitting nearby that had socks tucked inside them. There was also a folded t-shirt on top of a table about 12 to 15 feet away that authorities strongly suspected belonged to their victim. Nowhere in sight, though, were the man's trousers or wallet. So police scoured the area for those things, as well as anything that might have been used as a possible murder weapon, but they came up empty-handed. It's hard to tell from reading the available source material exactly how authorities made this next leap, but by some means they managed to positively ID the victim as "true". This is the story of a 20-year-old David Perry Llewellyn, a Tulsa County resident who worked for a saw blade manufacturer in the city but who lived in a Northeast suburb called Owasso. Again, it's unclear to me how detectives figured out who David was, since his wallet was said to be missing, but somehow they did. Anyway, by 2 o'clock that afternoon, an autopsy was conducted, and the pathologist who examined David determined that he'd died as a result of ligature strangulation and blunt force trauma to his head. In the pathologist's report, he noted that David had likely been strangled with a small rope or cord, as well as repeatedly beaten in the head with a blunt object, possibly a rock. Initial news coverage by Tulsa World stated that David's estimated time of death was determined to be between 2 and 3 o'clock in the morning on the 27th. However, later information produced in court records estimated that David could have been killed as early as 8 p.m. on the 26th, or as late as 4 a.m. on the 27th. When police spoke with his parents, Raymond and Maxine Llewellyn, they told detectives that on the evening before his murder, David had been at their house. Before heading out, he'd asked his dad if he could borrow one of his belts, and he also had $200 cash on his person. He was also wearing a family heirloom ring and a 17-jewel ring. David was also wearing a family heirloom ring and a 17-jewel ring. David's parents had a very special wristwatch, which, based on what I found on Google and depending on the name brand, might have been a higher-grade accessory and not your average type of wristwatch. His parents said that the last time they saw their son, he drove off in his green 1973 Dodge Coronet. But investigators had yet to find David's car. It wasn't parked at Mohawk Park when his body was found, and no one had reported seeing it. So the question became, where was it? And had the same person or people who'd killed him? Taking that, too. A few days into the investigation, authorities were hard up for leads. They hadn't identified a suspect, and no arrests seemed to be in sight. Meanwhile, on Wednesday, July 30, about four days or so after the murder, David's loved ones laid him to rest in Fairview Cemetery in Owasso. According to an article by Tulsa World, two days after that, on Friday, August 1, the biggest clue yet emerged: David's car was located at an apartment complex about 30 minutes southwest of the crime scene. And it was what wasn't in the vehicle that was of great interest to authorities. This peculiar location was definitely noteworthy. But even more suspicious, police told the press that thieves had completely stripped it of valuable accessories, including a CB radio. Authorities had only found out about the car after receiving a tip from an informant. I don't know who that person was or why they called, but based on what I read in the news coverage, it seems that the sequence of events went down like this. Police got wind from their informant about where the car was, they went and found it, and amidst all this happening, detectives managed to link the parts that had been stolen from it to at least five different juveniles, all of whom were quickly taken into custody. But what's interesting is that none of those juveniles were charged in relation to David's murder. They weren't even labeled as suspects. It seems that they merely received the stolen property taken from his car after the fact. They couldn't tell investigators anything about the murder, who the possible killer was, or how David's vehicle had ended up so far from the crime scene. It might have been one of those situations where these juveniles saw the car sitting abandoned for a while and then decided to strip it of valuables, thinking no one would care. Or maybe someone else burglarized it and then gave or sold the stolen contents to them. But the fact remains, the juveniles didn't end up being very useful to homicide investigators. So for several weeks, there wasn't much news reporting about the case. As far as the public was aware, it appeared the investigation was at a standstill. But behind closed doors, law enforcement was receiving lots of information. Information that would lead to not one, but two prime suspects. According to court records, near the end of August, a man named James Summers contacted the Sand Springs Police Department, which was a smaller suburban law enforcement agency about 25 minutes west of Mohawk Park. He told officers that he had information regarding David Llewellyn's murder. So of course, Sand Springs PD quickly put James in touch with the Tulsa PD detective in charge of David's case. And James then provided him with an official statement. He claimed that sometime in early July, so several weeks before the murder, he'd given cannabis to a 23-year-old man named Owen Swain, after Owen's brother-in-law, this guy named Richard Warren, had asked him to do so. The intent was for Owen to sell the cannabis, then give the proceeds of the sale to Richard, who would then presumably square up with James. However, when Richard later asked Owen to pay up, Owen claimed the cannabis had been stolen from him, so he couldn't repay his brother-in-law's debt. But, he swore that he would come up with the money somehow, even if he had to, quote, cut some old lady's throat, end quote. In early August, James said he was at Richard's house conducting a cannabis sale with Owen and one of Owen's friends, 18-year-old Mark Osterloh. And while speaking with the men, Mark began showing off a watch and ring he claimed he and Owen had recently acquired from someone he had robbed in Mohawk Park. Notably, Mark used a home of his own to sell cannabis. a homophobic slur to describe his victim. Around the same time police are learning this information, they also speak with a man named Arthur Conway, who told them that on August 24th, nearly a month after the murder, he'd bought a CB radio from Owen Swain. It seems that at the time of that transaction, Arthur didn't know where the radio had come from, but regardless, he gave Owen a $75 check for it. Two days later though, Arthur decided to take the radio to Tulsa PD and hand it over to detectives. Why he made that decision is unclear from the available source material, but one possible reason might be that he suspected it had been stolen. Whatever his reason was, detectives quickly realized the radio was identical to one that had been removed from David's car. It was a Pace brand CB radio. So in short order, police decided it was time to move in on Mark and Owen. On Monday, August 25th, detectives went to their respective homes and formally arrested them for murder. According to, coverage by Tulsa World, at the time of his arrest, Mark was wearing a ring and wristwatch that looked very similar to the jewelry David had last been seen wearing. At he and Owen's first appearances the following day, they were each charged with second degree murder and held under $50,000 bond. During the court hearings, law enforcement and the prosecution revealed several important details about the case, including additional physical evidence that had been located in Tulsa during the investigation, as well as the suspected circumstances that had led to David's murder. According to court records and coverage by Ralph Marler of Tulsa World, at some point police had spoken with Mark's brother and sister-in-law, Alan and Fawn Osterloh. The couple stated that in late July, about a day or so after David's murder became public knowledge, they'd gone to Owen's apartment to help him and Mark package cannabis that would eventually be sold. While they were there, Owen had asked Alan to be his and Mark's alibi for the night of July 26th. But Alan told the guys, no. Alan and Fawn said that while they were all together at Owen's place, Mark and Owen told them a story about how they'd robbed a man in Mohawk Park to pay for Owen's drug debts. Owen and Mark allegedly told them that on the night of July 26th, they'd met David Llewellyn at a bar or tavern in downtown, known to be an underground illegal gay bar. Though I can't verify whether he, Mark, and Owen were a part of the community. According to Alan and Fawn, Owen then drove them, and David's car to Mohawk Park. When they arrived, they say Mark told them he was in the backseat, David was in the passenger seat, and Owen was behind the steering wheel. At some point, David allegedly began to engage in sexual activity with Owen, but they say Mark quickly removed his own belt and started choking David with it from the backseat, and then dragged David from the car while Owen kicked him with his boot. Remember though, this is the sequence of events Mark and Owen allegedly confessed to Mark's brother and sister-in-law about. I'm spelling it out here because there would be serious discrepancies in their later court testimony. Anyway, according to Alan and Fawn, Mark and Owen allegedly said they eventually used a log to beat David to death. After they were sure he was dead, Mark is said to have told his brother and sister-in-law that the two of them had dragged David's body to the picnic pavilion and removed David's jewelry, clothing, and wallet. They said they then drove David's car to the apartment complex in the south part of the city and abandoned it. Before leaving, though, they took out the CB radio and wiped it down to remove fingerprints. They later went to Keystone Lake, some 40 minutes west of Mohawk Park, and hid David's wallet, trousers, and the log. News coverage states that authorities went to that area and found all that stuff, as well as a suitcase with those objects. But it's unclear where the suitcase came from or who it belonged to. The available coverage doesn't say whether police found the log, wallet, and trousers in the piece of luggage, next to it, near it, or what. But either way, all of those important pieces of physical evidence were reported to have been found together on August 25th, which was the same day Owen and Mark were arrested. However, according to Allen and Fawn, remember, that's Mark's brother and sister-in-law, when they first heard Owen and Mark's story about killing David, they didn't really take them seriously, even though Owen had shown them a CB radio that he and Mark said, quote, we killed a guy for it, end quote. Apparently, during that conversation, Allen had offered to purchase the radio from Owen, but he'd responded, quote, you don't want this radio, end quote, which one could argue might have implied there was something about the item that Owen didn't want Allen to be associated with. Anyway, for the next few months, the case wound its way through the criminal justice system. And there was an interesting decision made by a higher court that changed the severity of the charges both defendants were facing. You see, initially, prosecutors had only charged Owen and Mark with second-degree murder, not first-degree. Reason being, the assistant district attorney at the time wasn't sure whether the specific state law that defined first-degree murder was clear. The law said, first-degree murder was defined as a homicide if it occurred during the commission of a rape, kidnapping for extortion, first-degree arson, or armed robbery. It was that last part about armed robbery that was key in this case. Armed robbery, didn't actually have a firm definition in Oklahoma state law. The state statute just said that armed robbery was robbery either by a firearm or dangerous weapon. The legal question was, were the belt and log that had been used in this crime considered dangerous weapons? The assistant DA on the case didn't think so, which is why he'd only filed second-degree murder charges against Owen and Mark. You see, in mid-September 1975, an appellate court in another Oklahoma county had actually blocked a prosecutor from moving forward with first-degree murder charges in an unrelated armed robbery case that involved boots and an electric iron cord as murder weapons. He didn't think the law defined those items as dangerous weapons. But the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals chose to overturn that judge's decision. They ruled that it wasn't so much what the instrument was that was involved in a robbery that resulted in murder, but rather the manner in which that instrument was used. The appellate court essentially said that armed robbery could involve any item used in a dangerous manner, not just a knife or gun. So based on that ruling, in early November 1975, nearly two and a half months after Owen and Mark were arrested, the prosecutors in their case decided to drop the second-degree murder charges against them and filed first-degree murder charges instead. By April 1976, several months after a joint preliminary hearing, a judge ordered the men's cases be severed, but both of them would proceed to respective trials. Owen's jury trial got underway first in April. And you guessed it, the prosecution had a handful of witnesses ready to testify. Those folks' statements were intended to do serious damage to the defense. There was Alan and Fawn Osterloh, Mark's brother and sister-in-law, who told the court that Owen and Mark had confessed to them about David's robbery and murder. Fawn positively ID'd David's ring and tentatively identified his wristwatch as the items she'd seen Mark wearing. She and her husband also provided further context regarding Owen's reported drug deaths prior to the crime, which were apparently what had been the motive for the whole thing. They said that about two weeks before David's murder, Owen had told them a group of juveniles had stolen cannabis from him worth about $90, which of course was information that also aligned with what James Summers had already told authorities, that Owen had some cannabis stolen from him, which he could not pay back to James. And James, just like Mark's brother and sister-in-law, was also a strong witness for the prosecution. He testified about having conversations with Owen and Mark in the weeks before and after the murder regarding Owen's drug debt. He also discussed how he'd seen Mark showing off David's stolen ring and wristwatch. But a person from Owen and Mark's lives who contradicted James' version of events was Richard Warren, Owen's brother-in-law. Richard told the court that James had never been at his home in early August to do a drug deal with Owen and Mark, which meant, according to him, James couldn't have seen Mark flaunting the jewelry. But when it came down to the credibility of both Richard and James, something that didn't help matters was that both men had ongoing drug cases of their own, for which they were facing criminal charges and upcoming sentencings. However, to cast further doubt on the state's case and theory, Owen's defense attorney honed in on a detail that, honestly, is kind of important. According to Fawn and Allen, Owen and Mark's story was that they dragged David's body to the picnic pavilion, where they then removed his clothes and robbed him. But when the senior investigating officer for Tulsa PD took the stand, he indicated that the physical evidence didn't align with that version of events. He said that David's shirt, which had been found neatly folded on a table some 12 to 15 feet away from his body, had no blood on it. Which is interesting because, that would mean the shirt had to have come off before David was strangled and beaten. But Mark and Owen's alleged story didn't seem to account for that detail. The investigator also testified that David's heels bore no signs of having been dragged and there were no drag marks inside the picnic pavilion. He said that there was enough dust on the floor of the building to see visible footprints, but there were no marks in the dust that indicated a body had been dragged inside. He emphasized that he suspected David's body had likely been carried to the picnic pavilion the pavilion and then laid down on the quilt. Speaking of the quilt, there was something interesting about that piece of evidence, too. The investigator testified that it had been, quote, laid down purposefully and carefully, end quote, which would imply that whoever put it there had done so with some amount of thought or care. Now, what I really want to know is if the blanket had a significant amount of blood on it, like enough to indicate whether that could have been the spot the murder truly took place at. But I couldn't find anywhere in the news coverage or available court records if that detail was ever clarified. I guess because the police investigator said he believed David had been carried to the pavilion, that probably means the blanket didn't have a ton of blood on it, but who knows? In my opinion, the apparent incongruencies between the physical evidence and the version of events that Mark and Owen allegedly confessed to Alan and Fawn about are concerning. But they don't necessarily point to innocence. Mark and Owen could have told Alan and Fawn a version of the truth, but just changed certain details. One way to suss out if that was the case would have been for one of them to give their side of the story. But at trial, Owen's rebuttal to the mountain of circumstantial evidence and testimony against him was denial. He testified in his own defense and claimed that on the weekend of the crime, he had not gone to Mohawk Park. He said he didn't know anything about David's murder, but admitted that Mark had given him evidence of the murder. He also said that he had given him a CB radio the day after the crime, which he then subsequently sold to Arthur Conway. In response to the damning testimony jurors had heard from Alan and Fawn about him and Mark admitting to killing David, Owen said that yes, he and his friend had told the couple all that information, but he claimed it was done so jokingly. He emphasized that he didn't like the act of killing and had actually been discharged from the army because, according to him, he'd refused to have anything to do with killing. Under the circumstances, he said that he had not done anything to kill David. He said that he had not done anything to kill David. Unfortunately, though, for Owen, he wasn't able to provide an alibi for the time frame of David's murder. And on Tuesday, April 13th, when his trial ended, jurors deliberated for only three and a half hours before returning a guilty verdict. He was then sentenced to death. The following month, it was 18-year-old Mark's turn to go to trial, and that proceeding ended the same way his friends had, guilty of first-degree murder. At the time of his arrest, Mark had given a statement to police and claimed the whole robbery, had been Owen's idea. He said he'd just gone along with it to help his buddy find funds to pay off his drug debt. He claimed he'd never planned to kill David, because, in the end, all they'd gotten from him was between $20 and $30 in cash, his wristwatch, his ring, and the radio from his car. However, by the time Mark's trial rolled around, he'd done a complete 180. He'd unsuccessfully fought to have his initial statement to police excluded from trial. And when confronted about his arrest, he said, In his initial account and why he'd done what he'd done, he didn't really have much of an explanation except to emotionally utter, But like his co-defendant, Mark's first-degree murder conviction carried a mandatory death sentence. So he was put on Oklahoma's death row. But neither he nor Owen would remain there long. In 1977, not long after Owen was convicted, he filed an appeal with the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals. Among several constitutional rights he alleged had been violated, there was one in particular which had to do with how his jury had been instructed regarding his sentencing that he and his appellate counsel believed had been grossly violated. Their argument was that the trial judge had not properly explained the charges. The court explained to jurors that they could find Owen guilty of the lesser offense of second-degree murder, which did not carry the death penalty. And the appeals court ended up agreeing with Owen. The judges wrote in their ruling that proper interpretation of state law meant that a homicide which occurred during a robbery by force or fear can be considered second-degree murder under certain circumstances. The appellate judges had to determine whether or not a belt was considered a dangerous weapon in an armed robbery. Yeah, we're back to that again. And in the end, the court ultimately decided that it wasn't, despite the horrific circumstances of David's murder. So their ruling was Owen wasn't technically guilty of armed robbery since a belt wasn't considered a dangerous instrument, which meant jurors should have been able to consider sentencing him to second-degree murder. The appellate judges weren't reversing Owen's conviction. They were ordering the trial court modify his sentence to an indeterminate sentence obtained, 10 years to life, which was an appropriate punishment for second-degree murder. And of course, once that happened, Mark got the same modified sentence. Also by that point, the U.S. Supreme Court had overturned Oklahoma's death penalty. So on top of Mark and Owen's resentencings, there were 34 other inmates on Oklahoma's death row whose cases got a fresh look by the appellate-level courts. In 1979, both Owen and Mark appealed for clemency, but the state's pardon and parole board denied their request. They tried again nearly every year after that, but were always met with the same results. In 1989 and 1990, during two more unsuccessful attempts at clemency, Owen expressed remorse to parole board members for what he'd done. He said that he was experiencing a substance use disorder at the time of the crime, and that was a major contributing factor as to why he'd participated in the murder. He said, quote, I live every day with the fact that David Llewellyn is dead and that I am the man who caused his death. It's not a pleasant thought, and I don't think it's one I'm going to ever shake. End quote. In 2017, decades after making that statement, Owen was still actively pursuing post-conviction relief without an attorney. He filed a pro se request in Tulsa County District Court asking for his sentence to be shortened, but that request was swiftly denied a month later. He then filed another petition for post-conviction relief, but that too was rejected. As of this recording, both Owen and Mark remain incarcerated at Oklahoma State Prisons. Unfortunately, because this case is an older one, it was hard for me to find much information about the victim, David Llewellyn. He was only 20 years old when he was murdered, but I did find a 1973 Owasso High School yearbook, which features a senior photo of a David Llewellyn that I believe is him. However, I'm not 100% sure. If it is him, though, there's another mention of him on a different page in the yearbook, which indicates that he was part of a select group of students who were chosen to participate in a vocational technical education center program for Tulsa County Public Schools. That program picked a handful of students from area schools who were viewed as good candidates for college and helped prepare them for a job in a field of their interest. Listed next to David's name is the field vocational electronics. A quick search on Google revealed that that particular field of study, often called vocational electronics, often involves hands-on work related to microprocessors, circuit theory, schematics, and so forth. Which, I imagine, in the 1970s, wasn't a field every high school senior was pursuing. It was likely considered cutting-edge work given that things like computers weren't commonplace. Unfortunately, David's premature death was not the only one to befall the Llewellyn family. Maxine, his mother, died just a few years after him, in 1979, at the age of 57. His dad, Raymond, who'd testified at Owen and Mark's trials, passed away in 1999, at the age of 80. To do my due diligence for this episode, I tried to get a hold of David's surviving sibling, but was unsuccessful. I have to imagine, though, losing David the way the Llewellyn family did, at such a young age and under such violent circumstances, was difficult for them. His murder was not only senseless, but given the context of what we know, possibly even a hate crime. And in the end, his killers only got away with a few bucks in cash and a CB radio. It's such a shame. But also a reminder that murder, as much as some of us may want to deny it, is ubiquitous. Sometimes, you really can just cross paths with the wrong people at the wrong time. Park Predators is an AudioChuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, and you can also find us on our website, parkpredators.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, at Park Predators. I think Chuck would approve.