Clem convicted for role in Pagan’s Motorcycle Club 2022 first-degree murder in Carolina
By Esteban Fernandez | Times West Virginian December 11, 2024
https://www.timeswv.com/news/local_news/clem-convicted-for-role-in-pagans-motorcycle-club-2022-first-degree-murder-in-carolina/article_a15c3c76-b81e-11ef-a4db-570f53a5b8ad.html
FAIRMONT — Marion County Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Sean Murphy connected enough dots between Derek Clem and the 2022 murder of Henry Silver for a jury to render a guilty verdict Wednesday evening.
“Don’t check your common sense at the door,” Murphy said in his closing statement. “You don’t have to prove beyond every single doubt.”
Clem is one of six people indicted in the Pagan’s Motorcycle Club-connected shooting of Silver that took place Septemer 2022 outside the Carolina Arbors Apartments in Carolina. The others indicted for the crime were John Wolfe, Austin Mullins, Jonathan Biller, Dane Hull and Ryan Lane. A jury already convicted Wolfe for orchestrating the murder, while Hull was acquitted of murder but found guilty of conspiracy and a firearm charge. The case spun off after Silver had an affair with Wolfe’s girlfriend.
A jury found Wolfe guilty of having Silver killed by his fellow Pagans after an opportunity presented itself.
Murphy took a day and a half to connect Clem to the murder. Before he could produce the piece of evidence tying Clem to Silver’s death, Murphy had to present the circumstances behind the crime and the night in question to the jury.
The volume of information Murphy presented at times ran the risk of turning Clem into an extra at his own trial, since most of it was focused on Wolfe’s role in the murder. Murphy’s presentation was literally exhaustive, with Thomas Dyer, Clem’s attorney, making a crack at Murphy’s expense that he had nodded off during part of the state’s case, most likely during the interminable parade of grainy videos showing a truck make its way to and from the crime scene.
Dyer tried to turn Murphy’s own legal strategy against him, questioning what relevance any of the testimony related to Wolfe had to do with his client. Dyer tried to reframe the cellphone call Wolfe made to summon other Pagans. Silver was intoxicated and confrontational toward Wolfe the night of his murder. Dyer’s questioning of Wolfe’s son suggested Silver was acting in a way where Wolfe’s call was one for help, and not one for execution.
Halfway into day two of Clem’s trial, Murphy addressed Clem’s role in the murder directly. Murphy produced phone records showing Wolfe called Clem 20 minutes before Silver was murdered. Murphy said Clem, and three other men traveled to Carolina in Hull’s truck. Wolfe, his girlfriend and his girlfriend’s boyfriend were all in the vicinity of her apartment. After Wolfe identified Silver to three or four masked men, they rushed back to the parking lot and shot silver dead.
Dyer spotted the vague details in the state’s narrative and tried to blow them into outright holes in the state’s case. Was it three assailants or four? Was there one gun or several? Dyer, recalling Wolfe’s son testimony, pointed out the child was able to positively identify one man, and it was not Clem. It was Jonathan Matthew Biller, of Philippi.
The child laid the shooting at Biller’s feet, Dyer said. He argued it was not possible to positively identify Clem as being one of the masked assailants.
Murphy, however, used cellphone location data to back up his narrative. Digital forensics expert Craig Corkrean testified Clem’s phone was in the area of the crime at the time of the murder. Dyer countered by arguing there was no way to know for sure if Clem was in possession of his phone at the time, since earlier in the day Clem was at a Pagan’s meeting where all their phones were collected. Rules prohibited Pagans from bringing phones into club meetings. Dyer pointed out no one testified the phones had been returned to their appropriate owner afterward.
Detective Matthew Pigott, lead investigator, acquitted himself well during testimony. Wolfe used his knowledge of the different procedures the Pagans use to conduct their affairs as an outlaw motorcycle club, and tied it to the series of actions Wolfe, Clem and the others took before traveling to Carolina. Pigott testified Pagans held meetings and held votes on actions, once an action was agreed on it was a sanctioned action.
A meeting held at Wolfe’s grandmother’s house fit the criteria for this type of meeting, Pigott said. Murphy tied testimony from two witnesses who overheard the Pagans at the meeting agree to “take care of Henry Silver.” Later, Wolfe would tell Clem, “we got problems.”
“It was a phrase overheard by an 11-year-old boy made by an unknown speaker,” Dyer said. “How do you connect the dots from that to, ‘we got problems? Not because, ‘oh, there had to be a vote,’ because that’s how Pagan’s do it.”
Dyer’s strategy as a whole was to drive home the idea that the state was prosecuting Clem based on guilt by association. It was an idea that Pigott, perhaps inadvertently, gave credence to during his testimony. Dyer asked if there were other Pagan’s members at the meeting who weren’t present at the murder. Pigott said yes.
“Every member who participated in that [meeting] could be held accountable,” Pigott said.
Dyer asked if he would seek indictments against them as well. Pigott said yes. However, Pigott then backtracked, and said it would be based on whatever further investigation revealed.
Pigott also said the state’s accusation of Clem wasn’t out of the blue. Clem’s cell phone records put him in the vicinity of the crime, therefore he is connected to Wolfe by the phone call. When Clem got into the truck with the others, he knew what the intent was, which in Pigott’s opinion that Clem bore his own responsibility for Silver’s murder.
Dyer emphasized the Pagan’s weren’t on trial, Clem was.
However, before finishing his remarks, Dyer brought up a larger dimension in his closing. His remarks echoed some of the concerns brought up by spectators in the gallery, both from the defendants family and members of the defense profession. He said the case challenged the integrity of the justice system, since the prosecution’s case lost sight of the purpose of the trial, considering how little Clem figured into his own trial.
However, Murphy simplified it for the jury, finally injecting the missing throughline into his case through his closing statement. He pointed to a Signal message Wolfe sent to Lane, president of the club, saying, “I know what the outcome will be,” if Wolfe brought up Silver to the club.
Murphy pointed that out as the intent, which Clem and the others who traveled to Carolina shared with Wolfe the minute they got into the truck, he argued. The arguments Dyer made on Clem’s behalf were a distraction, Murphy said. He told the jury to ignore Dyer’s “Jedi Mind Tricks.”
Murphy said the organization acted on Wolfe’s behalf, and that events do not occur in a vacuum.
“There’s an effort to divorce Clem from his actions, but then his defense says, ‘assume he was there,’” Murphy said, referencing some hypotheticals Dyer walked Pigott through earlier. “They damn well knew he was there! You go to a place clad in a ski mask, with intent. Clem killed Silver whether he pulled the trigger or not. Doesn’t matter if [Biller] was the triggerman, Clem was there with intent.”
The jury agreed. They convicted Clem on first-degree murder and conspiracy, while acquitting him of the gun charge. Sentencing to follow.