Bob Smithberger has probably gotten used to answering questions about the 1981 murder of Washington County Sheriff’s Lt. Ray “Joe” Clark, often for periods of time lasting between three and seven hours.

Monday was no exception, as the key witness for the prosecution in the murder trial against Mitchell Ruble took the stand beginning at about 10:30 a.m. and finishing up after 4 p.m.

And with a hung jury resulting in the first trying of the case in October, both Ruble’s defense team and the special prosecutors from the Ohio Attorney General’s Office wanted the last word on Smithberger’s testimony, which took jurors through the alleged timeline of the murder that finally resulted in Ruble’s arrest.

“Immunity wouldn’t have helped me,” Smithberger said. “I figured if he (Ruble) saw me with cops…that he was going to kill me.”

After consistently denying he or Ruble’s involvement in the murder, which took place Feb. 7, 1981, when a shotgun blast struck Clark through his Dodd’s Run Road kitchen window, Smithberger told what he now says is the full and complete truth of the events, allegedly after he was offered not just immunity from prosecution, but police protection.

Prosecutor Daniel Breyer asked what the conditions of Smithberger’s immunity and protection were, to which Smithberger said that he had to tell the truth and that he could not be the shooter.

“If you are the shooter, you know you could be prosecuted?” Breyer asked, to which Smithberger answered yes. “And if you’re not telling the truth, you know you could be prosecuted for numerous counts of perjury?” Smithberger answered that yes, he knew that.

Smithberger’s main testimony read about the same as it did in October. He again testified that after returning from an Army Reserve drill in Grantsville, that Ruble had unexpectedly shown up to his house and had shouted “let’s go kill a certain lieutenant” up the stairs.

Smithberger testified that Ruble asked him for a shotgun that he had previously given Smithberger.

“He said he had too much to drink and wanted me to drive, he wanted to go to Marietta…and we took his blue Ford Pinto,” Smithberger said.

Again, Smithberger explained the story of how he and Ruble drove to Dodd’s Run Road, got stuck in the mud before turning around, and that Ruble had hopped out of the moving car near Clark’s house and told Smithberger to wait for him on Cole Coffman Road, which Smithberger admitted to doing.

“I went up on Cole Coffman Road, pulled off to the side and waited,” Smithberger said, mentioning that he moved his car multiple times. “I made one more trip out to see if I could find Mitch, and I couldn’t so I went home.”

Smithberger said though he never heard anything, he saw the lights of the emergency squad in the trees, and figured either Ruble or Clark had been hurt.

When Smithberger later picked Ruble up outside of a business on Gilman Avenue, that is when he said the threats from Ruble began, which occurred multiple times.

“He said I’d never live long enough to testify, and if he couldn’t get to me, someone else would,” Smithberger said. “I’m still scared to death that he’s going to kill me or he’s going to arrange for someone to kill me. Even sitting here.”

Defense attorney James Burdon referred to the massive book of documents in the case that includes Smithberger’s interview with law enforcement on Sept. 5, 2014, which lasted more than three hours, and the one that occurred Sept. 8, 2014, which took around seven hours and included Smithberger’s full story.

“You were placed under oath (in 1999), were asked questions specifically at this case, and you told them you had no knowledge of it and had no complicity in his death or the events leading up to it?” Burdon asked.

Smithberger admitted that yes, he had lied.

“You knew it was perjury?” Burdon asked.

Smithberger said he knew it was illegal to lie, but he believed he was doing it to save his own life.

Burdon also brought up discrepancies in Smithberger’s statements about the shotgun that night and about the state of Ruble’s clothes.

Burdon also scrutinized that investigators seemed to go too far in urging Smithberger to say that Ruble was the shooter and that he was the getaway driver, claiming they constantly told him that he “needed to act like a victim” and that saying that he had driven Ruble that night was his “get out of jail free card.”

“Do you remember them telling you that if you didn’t turn on Mitch Ruble, that he would turn on you and call you the shooter?” Burdon asked.

Smithberger noted multiple times that he did not recall a lot of the specific questions asked, but did not dispute the accuracy of the transcript of his interview.

Breyer drew out the fact that detectives used legal methods of deception to obtain the truth, even striking back with Ruble’s 1979 termination from the sheriff’s office, which came about when he had reportedly struck an 18-year-old suspect many times before leading him to the Ohio River handcuffed and putting a gun to his head.

“Did they ever grab your hair and pull it back and hit you? Did they ever take you down by the river and threaten to kill you?” Breyer asked Smithberger.

Smithberger said he had been treated fairly, and that he was never willing to tell the truth about his or Ruble’s involvement until he knew he could be kept safe.

Burdon asked Smithberger if he was even really receiving protection from law enforcement.

“They don’t escort you to work, or to the store, and they don’t secure your residence, right?” Burdon asked.

Smithberger said he no longer lives at his previous Lowell address because of the protection agreement, but noted that law enforcement escorts him when he needs to make various trips around the Marietta area.

“So you don’t even need protection really, because no one knows where you live,” Burdon said.

Washington County special deputy Bruce Schuck, who was brought onto the cold case unit when it was formed years ago, also testified Monday, explaining that he and fellow investigators used deception tactics that are commonly used to gage reactions when questioning Smithberger, and that they had been as thorough as they could with what they had.

“We, independently from each other, went through the case files, with some 20,000 documents,” Schuck said. “There were hundreds of witnesses interviewed.”

The defense has suggested that Washington County’s cold case squad was formed behind the idea of going after Ruble.

“We started with a more recent case that was a 4-year-old homicide,” Schuck said. “Then the decision was made that we’d focus on the murder of Joe Clark. It was 30 years old, witnesses had passed away, officers involved had passed away, there was a witness who talked to the driver of that car who had passed away.”

Schuck said though a number of people have been eliminated as possible suspects over the years, Ruble and Smithberger never have.

More investigators and specialists are expected to testify for the prosecution in the coming days.