OKLAHOMA CITY — A frequent visitor to a house where a prostitute featured on the HBO reality series “Cathouse” and three others were shot to death testified Wednesday that there was so much drugs, cash and naked women around that “it was like a movie.”
Karine Sanders, 21, described the scene inside the south Oklahoma City house where a drug distribution and prostitution ring was operated during the first day of a preliminary hearing for David Allen Tyner, 29. The former Marine is accused of shooting, stabbing and then burning the bodies of Brooke Phillips and Milagrous Barrera, both 22, Jennifer Ermey, 25, and Mark Barrientos, 32.
Phillips had worked at the Moonlite BunnyRanch, a legal brothel near Carson City, Nev., that is featured in the HBO reality show “Cathouse.” Because Phillips and Barrera were pregnant, Tyner faces a total of six counts of first-degree murder. He has pleaded not guilty.
Sanders, who said she is Tyner’s cousin, said that in the weeks and months before the shooting she traveled many times to the house where Tyner worked as a bodyguard for Barrientos, the alleged leader of the drug operation.
She said she saw marijuana bricks stacked in piles inside the house, quantities of cocaine and methamphetamine, tables covered with stacks of cash and naked women roaming around. Sanders said she frequently witnessed drug deals in which $75,000 to $100,000 would change hands.
“There was always girls and Casey was always having a party,” Sanders said, referring to Barrientos by his nickname. “It was like a movie.”
She said she used to visit the house with then-boyfriend Denny Phillips, 32, who she testified participated in drug transactions. She said Phillips and Tyner became upset with the amount of money they were receiving for their work for Barrientos and came up with a scheme to kill him.
“It was just a big stupid situation over money,” Sanders said. She said Tyner at one point said they could leave no living witnesses to identify them.
Sanders, who said she broke off contact with the two men weeks before the shooting, faces no charges.
Prosecutors have no evidence that Phillips was at the scene of the shootings and he has not been charged in the victims’ deaths. But District Attorney David Prater said the “investigation is not closed.”
Phillips is being held in the Tulsa County Jail after being shot by Tulsa police three times in April when he allegedly pointed a gun at officers who found him at a motel.
He is scheduled to go to trial on March 7 for possession of a firearm after former conviction of a felony and feloniously pointing a firearm. His attorney, Jeff Price of Claremore, said he was not aware of the testimony in Tyner’s case and had no comment.
The sole survivor of the shooting, Jose Fierro, testified that Tyner appeared at the house in the early morning hours on the day of the shooting looking for Barrientos, who was not there. Fierro said he was in a bedroom when Barrientos arrived.
“I heard Casey yell, and then gunshots,” Fierro said. “It was just a lot of rounds.”
Fierro said he ran from the bedroom through the garage and out of the house. He said he looked back toward the house after he stumbled and fell on a neighbor’s lawn.
“I seen Mr. Tyner chasing me,” he said. “I got up and kept running.”
Tyner’s preliminary hearing resumes Friday.