Grant’s stepdaughter testifies for prosecution
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The high-profile murder trial against local Pima businessman Doug Grant continued in the Maricopa County Superior Court last week with defense attorney Mel McDonald’s opening remarks and testimony from Grant’s 18-year-old stepdaughter, Jenna Stradling.
Grant is accused of murdering his wife, Faylene Eaves Grant, in 2001. Faylene drowned in the bathtub of the couple’s Gilbert home after ingesting five times the recommended dosage of the prescription sleep-aid Ambien.
On Wednesday, Stradling tearfully described trying to enter the master bedroom and finding the door locked.
“I just felt guilty because I felt like if I would have knocked on the door that maybe my mom would still be alive,” she said.
Stradling later testified to a conversation she said Grant had with her after he came out of the hospital room.
“Well, we went out into the hall and he told me if my mom wakes up, she might say weird things,” she said.
Stradling was only 11 when her mother died, and McDonald said her testimony of the events changed from her original account given to investigators at the time.
McDonald portrayed Faylene as being obsessed with what she believed to be revelations from God that she would soon die.
He presented letters and journals written by Faylene that speak of her impending death and gives instructions to those around her.
One letter written to Hillary DeWitt asked her to take over for Faylene after she died. Dewitt was a 19-year-old receptionist at Grant’s company at the time and had been romantically linked with him while Faylene and Grant were previously separated.
“I want you to be the mother of my children,” Faylene wrote, citing that she had to leave this world because she had “been spiritually called to a mission elsewhere.”
Maricopa Deputy County Attorney Juan Martinez previously accused Grant of manipulating Faylene’s faith in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to satisfy his own agenda. During his opening remarks, he portrayed Grant as a serial womanizer and said he never broke off his relationship with Hilary after remarrying Faylene on July 27, 2001. Martinez said Grant told Hilary to wait for him because Faylene was going to die.
Grant and Hilary married less than a month after Faylene died.
The trial will continue in Downtown Phoenix on Dec. 1-4 at 10:30 a.m. each day.
