In the apartment upstairs, the thumping, shouting and cursing began about 6 p.m. Friday.

It went on for hours. At times, it sounded like heavy furniture being tossed around, Joe Talley and his friends said.

The next afternoon, Lawrence Police came to apartment No. 23 at 1722 W. 24th St. — the apartment directly above Talley’s — and found the body of Michael Bruce Riley, a 49-year-old cook for an all-night pancake house who’d lived there only a few days.

The man charged in his slaying, the first this year in Lawrence, is 31-year-old David Joel Uptain. He was in the Douglas County Jail Sunday without bond.

Uptain had no permanent address and needed a place to live, so he was informally sharing Riley’s second-floor apartment in the Hampton Court complex, Lawrence Police Lt. David Cobb said.

Riley, who recently lived in Missouri, moved into the apartment about Dec. 31, Cobb said. About two weeks ago he started working at International House of Pancakes, 3102 Iowa, waitress Katy Nichols said.

She described him as “impish,” with gray hair, a mustache and a beanie sometimes perched on his head. He usually worked the night shift, she said.

“I guess he kind of wandered and did the hippie thing,” Nichols said Sunday. “He was a very smart guy. I knew that he’d had a bad situation and that he needed to get that apartment.”

Uptain sometimes came into the restaurant, Nichols said. She said Riley introduced Uptain as his new roommate, someone who had helped him out in the past.

Uptain served time in a Kansas prison for an August 2000 burglary in Wyandotte County, according to Kansas Department of Corrections records, and was released in October 2001.

Nichols said she didn’t notice any tension between the two men. She said Uptain recently sold her a compact disc by the band Nirvana.

Uptain

Lawrence Police Chief Ron Olin said Sunday morning that he couldn’t release any details about the crime scene or the manner of Riley’s death.

But Talley and two friends who were watching a football game in his apartment — J.J. Wagner and Dan Harlan — described in detail what they claim to have seen and heard Friday.

About 6 p.m. Friday, Uptain came to Talley’s door and asked to use the phone because he was trying to get furniture delivered, Talley said.

A few minutes later, Talley and his friends heard a noise outside the window. They said they looked out and saw Uptain with a shopping cart.

He told them he was locked out.

“He climbed onto the shopping cart, broke the window out and climbed through the window,” Wagner said. “From that point the fighting started.”

A woman who lives a couple of doors down from Riley said she didn’t hear anything strange Friday night.

“We didn’t hear any commotion or any yelling, anything like that,” Staci Griffith said.

Police said that was true for most people who lived in the building, but Talley said he banged on the ceiling all night telling the people above to keep it down.

At various times during the night, Talley saw water pouring down his walls into his bathroom and utility closet, he said.

He and his friends said they thought about going upstairs and knocking on the door.

“There was yelling, but nobody screamed,” Wagner said. “There were some solid ‘thuds.'”

J.J. Wagner, from left, Joe Talley and Dan Harlan describe the noises and fighting they heard coming from the apartment above Talley's at Hampton Court apartments, 1722 W. 24th St. Talley and his friends on Sunday said they heard a commotion that lasted for several hours on Friday night. A man was found slain in the apartment on Saturday.

About 10:45 p.m., things quieted down.

“There was never a gunshot,” Talley said.

On Saturday, police got a tip that someone may have been injured late Friday or early Saturday. They found Riley’s body about 2 p.m. Saturday, and it appeared there had been a violent scene in the apartment, Cobb said.

Police found Uptain asleep at an apartment in Old West Lawrence on Saturday evening, Cobb said.

“Once we found him, we asked him if he would come with us to the Police Department and answer a few questions about his relationship to the victim,” Cobb said.

Uptain agreed to go, and when police finished interviewing him, they booked him into the jail at 2:43 a.m. Sunday on a charge of second-degree murder.

An autopsy was schedule for Sunday.