John Price, 37, is facing a possible life sentence if convicted of killing Donald Jessup inside a Ravensdale home in December 2004.

South King County man accused of beating a member of a rival motorcycle club with an ax handle and then shooting him in the face is on trial for first-degree murder in a case where authorities never found the body of the victim.John Price, 37, is facing a possible life sentence if convicted of killing Donald Jessup inside a Ravensdale home in December 2004. King County sheriff's deputies say Price believed that Jessup stole his Harley-Davidson and was trying to sell it back to him for $800.King County Senior Deputy Prosecutor Scott O'Toole said in his opening statement Monday that deputies searched unsuccessfully for DNA and other evidence linking Jessup's slaying to the Ravensdale home. O'Toole said that witnesses heard Price claim to have rolled Jessup up in a rug and buried him "up north.""Call it what you will, call it retribution," O'Toole said to the jury at the Norm Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent. "But call it what it is, murder in the first degree."In the nearly four years since Jessup disappeared, his family and friends haven't heard from him, O'Toole said.Without physical evidence, O'Toole is relying on the statements of Price's ex-girlfriend and the woman he lived with, who both said they heard a gunshot inside the home on the night of Dec. 19, 2004. O'Toole read to jurors excerpts of letters Price sent his ex-girlfriend from the King County Jail; in many of the letters he asked the woman to lie to authorities about what she knew.Defense attorney Julie Gaisford told jurors that the testimony by many of the witnesses O'Toole plans to present should be discounted because of their drug addictions, criminal histories and anger at Price."There is nothing of probative value to link John Price with the death of Donald Jessup," Gaisford said in her opening statement.Channel Ridley, the 23-year-old mother of Price's three children, took the witness stand Monday as the state's key witness. She told deputies that she saw Jessup dead inside the Ravensdale home and heard Price call someone to say that "garbage had to be disposed of."