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Reduced Sentence Sought For Police Slaying Accomplice

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By ELAINE SILVESTRINI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 11, 2008

Updated: 11/11/2008 09:32 pm

TAMPA - Nearly 11 years ago, a few minutes before sunrise on a March morning in a Haines City cemetery, Christopher Gamble and his friends celebrated a successful hotel robbery and planned to rob a bank.

Rookie city police Officer Christopher Todd Horner, patrolling an area where stolen cars were often dumped, radioed to headquarters as he pulled his patrol car onto Cemetery Road.

"I'll be with a 13V," Horner said, using police code for a suspicious vehicle. "No visible 28 [license plates], larger size, dark-colored vehicle, may be a Crown Vic."

Dispatcher Peggy Hawkins routinely replied with the time, "6:38."

Horner turned on a spotlight and surprised Gamble and his friends. With his gun drawn, He ordered them out of the car.

Gamble said later that the others wanted to grab their guns, but he thought there was still a chance to talk their way out of the situation, and he told them to let him try. He told Horner that he was there to visit an aunt's grave, but Horner didn't believe him.

Horner started to step back to his car so he could run a check on their names. Charles Fowler quietly emerged from a nearby orange grove.

Fowler sneaked up behind Horner's car and grabbed the officer's hand with the gun, Gamble said. They all started helping him try to disarm Horner.

"I told him, I said, 'Man, don't resist us. Just give up,' nothing would happen," Gamble said.

"He gave up his gun [because] he trusted me," Gamble said.

Horner was shot in the head.

Gamble took the officer's gun from Fowler and stuffed it beneath Horner's body. The conspirators fled.

Horner became the only officer in Haines City, a town of about 14,500 residents east of Lakeland, to die in the line of duty.

For years, the officer's slaying went unsolved. There were whispers of suicide and financial problems.

Gamble was not mentioned as a suspect. In 2002, he could be silent no more.

"My life, from that point in time, ain't never been the same," Gamble would later testify.

In state prison for another robbery, Gamble said he was motivated to step forward by a new-found faith in God, a religious aunt who told him to be honest and a bond he formed during previous run-ins with Horner.

Gamble pleaded guilty to his role in the slaying and was sentenced to life, plus 107 years behind bars.

He met face to face with each of his accomplices at the request of law enforcement and tried to get them to admit what they did. When none of them confessed, Gamble testified against them in court. All of them — Fowler, Andre T. Paige and Robert Winston — were convicted at separate trials.

Gamble was called a liar and a snitch. But he kept testifying, and juries kept agreeing with him.

Now, a federal prosecutor wants a judge to reduce Gamble's sentence to 24 years in federal prison. U.S. District Judge James S. Moody Jr. is scheduled to consider a motion Thursday from Assistant U.S. Attorney James Muench.

"If not for Gamble's testimony, three men involved in the execution of Officer Horner would have escaped prosecution and Officer Horner's children would have grown up wondering whether their father had taken his own life," Muench wrote. "Without Gamble, the government had nothing."

Horner's mother, Carol Mitchell, said she supports the prosecutor's request.

"We're all in favor of it because, without Chris', without his coming forward, we probably still wouldn't have known what happened," she said. "I really feel he's been sincere in his effort to bring everything to a close, and we really appreciate it."

Mitchell said she has forgiven Gamble.

"I don't hold him responsible. I think he tried to do everything he could to keep our Chris from getting hurt, but it didn't work out that way."

Mitchell doesn't plan to be at Friday's court hearing, and she hasn't spoken with Gamble. If she were to see him, she would "just thank him for coming forward with the information he did."

Her son, she said, was an "upstanding guy and he had a lot of humor, and he's still missed a lot."

Reporter Elaine Silvestrini can be reached at (813) 259-7837.

Editor's Note: An earlier version of this story misidentified Gamble's accomplices.

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