Testimony in the case of Darrell Lynn Tipton took a colorful turn Thursday morning, when a career criminal and self-described jailhouse "rat" took the stand to tell jurors he'd heard Tipton admit to killing a woman.

Billy Lutz, a 20-time felon, told jurors he'd approached Tipton in the Greene County Jail in December 2005, and asked if he'd killed Cindy Anne Coop-Trent.

"I asked him how he killed her, then he smiled," said Lutz, dressed in a green jail jumpsuit.

He said Tipton described how he took a cast-iron skillet and "wore it out on her."

"I made the statement that 'you probably should have set the house on fire,' and he said he was going to, but there was someone who knew he was there," Lutz testified.

He began to regale the jury with a discussion of jail culture and how such blunt conversations are permissible, but was cut short by an attorney's objection.

Tipton is charged with two counts of first-degree assault, two counts of armed criminal action and a single count of unlawful use of a weapon in the June 2005 attack on Coop-Trent.

Prosecutors contend the two got into an argument and Tipton beat the 38-year-old woman with a skillet before stabbing her in the back with a kitchen knife.

He also allegedly pulled a knife on two men after the attack, in an attempt to get a ride to Joplin.

Coop-Trent later died, but an autopsy was unable to determine a cause of death. The woman had potentially fatal levels of Prozac in her system.

Lutz's testimony was among the trial's last. Both the prosecution and defense rested their cases Wednesday, and closing statements are expected this morning.

Stuart Huffman, Tipton's attorney, sought to discredit Lutz by pointing out he's helped police on a dozen occasions -- even periodically arranging drug buys for police when he was out of prison. Huffman suggested Lutz was only seeking personal gain by testifying.

The attorney referenced Lutz's testimony in an earlier deposition, in which he referred to his cooperation with police as "a game."

"That's what it was to me, a game," Lutz said in the deposition. "I can do what I want to, and if I tell them something, they'll get me out (of jail)."

Asked by Assistant Greene County Prosecutor Russ Dempsey whether his testimony made him a rat, Lutz smiled and replied in his gravelly voice: "Oh, very much."

Huffman called only one witness, an ex-convict who'd been in jail at the same time as Tipton and Lutz.

That man, Dennis Colvard, testified he'd never seen Lutz speak with the defendant during their time together.

In fact, Colvard said he'd warned Tipton about people like Lutz when the man was first booked.

"First day he come in I told him to watch out," he said. "There was a lot of snitches in there. I believe I probably did mention Billy."

Before resting, prosecutors called Ruth Montgomery, an analyst with the Missouri Highway Patrol Crime Lab in Jefferson City.

She testified DNA found on the snapped-off handle of a skillet found near Coop-Trent's body was "consistent" with Tipton.

The DNA profile found on the handle would be found in only 1 in 1,957 men, Montgomery said.

Greene County Medical Examiner Dr. Doug Anderson also took the stand. He explained Coop-Trent's single knife wound had entered her back and gone on to crack a rib.

The woman also had a chipped tooth, bruised lips and a blunt-force wound on her scalp, Anderson said.

Following the attack, Tipton allegedly fled to Tennessee, where he hid near the Appalachian Trail for months before being captured near his mother's home in October 2005.