A waitress at the Pink Pony strip club where a death penalty defendant went after he allegedly shot two people testified Friday that he threatened to kill her when she wouldn't drink shots with him.
The waitress, Jennifer Carlton, testified in the Cobb County trial of Joshua Drucker, 33, of McDonough, that Drucker was known to the girls in the strip club as "the money thrower" because he threw $1 bills around on a prior visit. She said when he came into the club in April 2004, he bought her entire tray of 44 shots for $220 so that she could talk to him for an hour.
"He was cocky," Carlton recalled on the stand. "It was like he was kind of happy, but not really. It was like he was trying to impress me."
Prosecutors say Drucker's encounter with Carlton happened just a few hours after he gunned down an acquaintance, David Andrew Robertson, 40, and Lora Nikolova, 25, in the kitchen of Robertson's home.
Carlton testified that Drucker began to confide problems his family had been experiencing, including a sister who tried to kill herself by overdosing on drugs because she was depressed about the recent death of her infant child. She said Drucker told her that his sister was "a vegetable" in the hospital. He said the guy who had sold her the drugs deserved to die, and asked the waitress if she agreed.
"I said, ‘No, it's not his fault that his sister OD'd,'" Carlton testified, recounting the conversation. "I said, ‘If he knew she was going to overdose, he probably wouldn't have sold her the drugs.' "
Drucker told police in a videotaped confession that was screened for jurors on Thursday that he had killed Robertson as part of a personal vendetta because Robertson gave his sister a potentially deadly cocktail of drugs. He allegedly shot Nikolova when she yelled at him and tried to intervene.
At some point during their discussion, the waitress said Drucker also confided that he was a pastor's son and expressed doubts about the existence of God because of everything bad that had happened to his family.
Then he told her he was a drug dealer and offered her methamphetamine, Carlton said. He also urged her to drink some of the shots he had purchased from her, but Carlton said she declined. That's when the waitress said Drucker flew into a rage, grabbed her arm and threatened to kill her. He got kicked out of the club.
"I couldn't believe it. It was like the guy was crazy," Carlton said. "You could see the look in his eyes. It was crazy. Just for not drinking shots."
Police said they arrested Drucker and his female friend and co-defendant, Melissa McCrayer, at the end of a 36-hour meth binge that included trips to a Mexican restaurant, a motel room in Sandy Springs and two Atlanta strip clubs.
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