Was it murder or self- defense?

A retired Army chaplain’s assistant allegedly shot and killed two Hispanic men after he paid one of them $200 for sex but then was denied, prosecutors said Tuesday during the opening of a double-murder trial.

“Leslie Parvin sits before you today as a man who led a double life,” Nicole Simpson, a prosecutor in the 5th Circuit Solicitor’s Office, said during her opening statement.

Luke Shealey, part of Parvin’s defense team from the 5th Circuit Public Defender’s Office, said those accusations were insulting to a decorated war veteran who has a wife and three sons.

“In his 20-year career, there is nothing to suggest he led a double life while in the military or a double life to his family,” Shealey said. “It’s nothing more than the state over-reaching and slandering a war hero.”

Parvin, who served in Operation Desert Storm, Iraq and Afghanistan, and his defense team will make a case for self -defense. Parvin will testify during the trial, Shealey said.

Parvin, 40, has been in jail at the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center on two counts of murder since he was arrested in August 2010. He is accused of shooting and killing Edgar Lopez, a Guatemalan immigrant who lived on Woodfield Road, and Pablo Gutierrez-Guzman, a Mexican immigrant who lived on Percival Road.

After the shooting, Parvin fled to Louisiana and then Texas before returning to his family’s home in Columbia. While he was away, he destroyed the van and the gun he used in the shooting, Simpson said.

“I submit he returned home because he thought he had gotten away with murder,” Simpson said.

The men were drinking beer in the backyard of a home where Lopez lived on July 30, 2010, when Parvin drove up in his green Kia minivan, Simpson said. None of the men knew Parvin before he arrived at the house, witnesses said.

Three witnesses – all Hispanics who used a translator to answer questions in court – described seeing Parvin drinking beer with Lopez and Gutierrez-Guzman. They also said Parvin was carrying a handgun, and two of the witnesses said Parvin showed off his tattoos.

Those tattoos include a portrait of a nude woman and a fox on Parvin’s back.

In Shealey’s opening statement, he brought up the tattoo as an example of how much Parvin loved his wife and, therefore, would not solicit for gay sex.

“He loved her and was so hot for her he wanted her with him while he was deployed,” Shealey said. “The state will tell you he had arranged a sex act with two guys who had loaded 1,500 bales of pine straw in the hot summer sun. That’s insulting.”

Two other Hispanic witnesses testified that they saw Lopez buying a case of Budweiser at a convenience store on Percival Road. Lopez told them he was with “an American” who was paying for the beer and who also gave him $200 for sex, the witnesses said. They also said Lopez was drunk.

“He told me the American wanted to have sex with him, and I told him not to do it,” said Adan Soto, one of the witnesses from the convenience store.

Another witness, Dimas Fernandez, who lived at the home where the shooting happened, said he was leaving the house when he saw Parvin throw a beer and a chair. At that point, Lopez pulled cash out of his pocket and threw it at Parvin, Fernandez said. As Fernandez drove away, he said he saw Parvin leave the yard through a gate and walk to his van.

Fernandez testified that he stopped at a friend’s house about a block and a half from his home and that’s when he heard gunshots. He said he knew Parvin had a gun, and he also said he saw Parvin’s green van leave the neighborhood.

During her opening statement, Simpson told the jury that investigators found .45-caliber shell casings at the scene, along with Parvin’s fingerprints and DNA. Lopez had been shot once in the head and once in the abdomen. Gutierrez-Guzman had been shot three times in the back, she said.

“Leslie Parvin, who felt perhaps he had been played for a fool, pulled out his gun and shot two unarmed men,” Simpson said.

That was not the case, Shealey said. Parvin, who has a bad back because of his military service, was forced to shoot the men because he felt his life was threatened, Shealey said.

Parvin had stopped at the house to ask the men if they knew where he could find some scrap metal, which he collected as a hobby, Shealey said. He paid for the beer in an attempt to befriend the men, he said.

When Parvin decided to leave he asked for the change for the beer and Lopez got mad, Shealey said.

“This is a case about self-defense, your right to survive,” he said.