COLUMBIA, Mo. — Even with 27,000 other students in this leafy college town, Jesse James Valencia stood out. Outspoken, gay and blessed with the looks of an Abercrombie & Fitch model, the 23-year-old junior seemed to saunter through his busy life at the University of Missouri.

He carried a full load of history and political science courses, worked evenings as a hotel clerk, and packed his social calendar with parties, Internet dates and drag shows at Columbia's only gay nightclub. He wrote editorials in the campus papers advocating same-sex marriage and had big plans for his future.

Jesse James Valencia was studying history and political science at "Mizzou" when he was murdered.

"He talked about going to law school and he even toyed around with running for president, the first homosexual," a friend, Jennifer Witherspoon, recalled.

By comparison, Steven Arthur Rios was something of a square. A junior police officer, Rios lived across town in a small house with his pretty blond wife and newborn. He wore glasses and, at 27, already had a receding hairline. When he wasn't patrolling the area around campus on the overnight shift, he was volunteering for community boards and police charities. For fun, he went to the stationhouse roof to drink beer with a few other officers.

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Last spring, the paths of the two men intersected when Rios arrested Valencia for mouthing off to officers who were breaking up a noisy off-campus party. If such town-and-gown collisions in Columbia are routine, what followed was not. The married cop and the gay student embarked on a wild sexual affair, which authorities say led to Valencia's brutal murder at Rios' hands.

In a trial that began this week in Boone County Circuit Court, Rios stands accused of slitting Valencia's throat last summer to keep him from telling the city police chief, Rios' boss, about their two-month relationship.

If convicted of first-degree murder, Rios, once a jail guard, faces life in prison.

Admitting the affair

The prosecution claims Rios rendered his lover unconscious with a choke hold learned at the police academy and then used a pocketknife he carried in his patrol uniform to make a 4-inch gash in the younger man's neck. After classmates found Valencia's body splayed on a lawn a block from campus, Rios reported to work on his day off and nonchalantly offered to guard the crime scene and identify the body.

Immediately after the June 5, 2004, killing, rumors swirled through the city's gay community that Valencia had been dating a married cop. When the accusation made it to a police tip line, Rios sought out investigators and denied he was the officer in question. An investigator testified Wednesday that Rios went so far as to tell a detective working the case that two other department colleagues were more likely candidates for a gay affair.

"He stated that he had arrested Jesse in April some time on a charge of obstructing a governmental operation and that he only knew him on an official basis," the lead detective in the murder investigation, John Short, testified Wednesday.

But by that time, officers knew there was more to the story. They had already interviewed a host of Valencia's friends and lovers, including a man who'd had a sexual encounter with Rios and Valencia.

The man, Andy Schermerhorn, told jurors about a May 14 incident in which Rios, wearing his patrol uniform, barged in on him and Valencia while they were having sex.

"Suddenly, there was a flashlight in the room. I stood up to gather my boxer shorts and I realized there was a police officer in the room," Schermerhorn testified Wednesday.

He said Rios urged the pair to continue and then, after removing his holster and gun, joined them in bed. Later, he left, saying he had to return to his patrol.

Confronted with this story during the investigation, Rios admitted the affair but said he had not seen Valencia for six days before his death and knew nothing about the murder. The day the local news reported the relationship, Rios phoned police headquarters and said he had bought a shotgun and planned to kill himself. He later surrendered and was committed to a mental hospital.

A day later, he hopped the wall of the facility and climbed to the top of a five-floor parking garage. For nearly two hours, he teetered on a ledge clutching a photo of his wife and son and a St. Louis Cardinals baseball hat. As local news crews filmed the drama, crisis negotiators convinced him to come down from the wall and return to the mental-health facility.

Based on witness statements and forensic evidence placing Rios' hair and DNA at the crime scene, Rios was charged with murder.

Some officers recalled Rios frequently carrying a knife in his pants pocket, something he denied after the murder, but investigators were unable to find it during searches of his locker, home and vehicle.

DNA under the fingernails

A special prosecutor, brought in from another county because of Rios' prior working relationship with the local prosecutor's office, suggested to jurors that the motive for the killing was fear of exposure.

Jack Barry testified about learning that his former boyfriend had been killed.

In a conversation three days before the murder, Valencia told his best friend that he was going to confront Rios.

"I'm really going to ask him this time if he's married or not because I really don't want to be in a relationship with a married man," the friend, Joan Sheridan, quoted him as saying during her testimony.

She also testified that Valencia wanted the officer to fix the ticket he'd given him at their first meeting and boasted that, if he didn't, the police chief might learn "a little secret" about Rios.

Rios has been held without bail since his arrest. In court, he greets his father and wife, Libby, with enthusiastic waves and mouthed words.

Libby Rios has been unwavering in her support for her husband. She is expected to testify for the defense that, about an hour after he is alleged to have killed Valencia, he chatted with her in their kitchen as she warmed a baby bottle for their infant son, Grayson.

Rios' defense is expected to focus in part on Valencia's complicated love life. A handful of former lovers have testified, and in the defense opening statement Tuesday, Rios' lawyer implied that his promiscuity made for a deep pool of other suspects.

"There will be evidence that Jesse Valencia had sexual contact with a lot of men he picked up over the Internet or that he picked up in a bar," attorney Valerie Leftwich said.

She told jurors that forensic evidence — Rios' hairs on the victim's chest and his DNA under his nails — could all be explained by the pair's previous intimate relations and Valencia's lackadaisical approach to housekeeping and personal hygiene.

The DNA of another man, a student he'd picked up in a bar a day before his murder, was also found under his nails. His former boyfriend, Jack Barry, conceded that Valencia did his laundry infrequently and did not shower daily.

"He likes his hair to be chunky. A day [between showers] helps his hair," Barry said. The witness, however, noted that Valencia owned a manicure kit and liked to buff his nails.

As Barry recalled Valencia's fondness for Neutrogena moisturizer, the victim's mother, Linda Valencia, dabbed away tears from her seat in the courtroom.

There have also been pitched emotions on the defense side. Many of the Columbia Police Department officers called in the trial have taken pains to say that they only knew Rios, a three-year veteran of the force, as a professional acquaintance, not a friend.

But one, patrolman James Means, acknowledged during testimony Wednesday that he was close to the defendant.

Linda Valencia's son, Jesse, was found dead on a lawn near campus.

"Steve was a good friend of mine," Means said, swallowing hard and staring toward Rios, who stared back at him. The witness recalled Rios seeming quiet and distant as they secured the scene of Valencia's murder.

"Just based on what I know of Steve, there was something wrong. Something was wrong," he said.

Rios' lip quivered and he began crying into a tissue.

A gay-friendly town

The case has mesmerized Columbia, a city of 90,000 midway between St. Louis and Kansas City. Local news coverage was so intense that lawyers went to a county two hours away this week to pick jurors.

Columbia is largely defined by "Mizzou," as the university is known here. The largest employer in the area, the school also runs the hospitals and provides citizens with a rich cultural life that makes it routinely ranked among the best places to live in the country.

"The idea of a police officer killing one of our students — if that's what happened here — people were shocked and horrified," Mayor Darwin Hindman recalled.

Perhaps more disconcerting in open-minded Columbia, which is regarded as the most liberal place in the state, was the alleged motive.

"There are gay officers on the force," said Kevin Crane, the county's prosecuting attorney. "The sole fact that a police officer is gay would not have created some sort of public outcry like this is 1930s Alabama."

Gay and lesbian couples feel comfortable holding hands in public.

"It's very accepting, very inclusive and very supportive," said Nicki Nixon, who runs a marketing and grant writing company with her partner and is on the board of a local gay rights advocacy group. She noted that the city is one of three in the state with a policy prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Hindman said that if Rios is convicted, the crime will have proved to be more about the state of his mind than the city of Columbia.

"We wouldn't have had any problem with an openly gay police officer," the mayor said, "but it seems possible that he had a problem with that."