Saturday, October 30, 2010

Dallas, TX: On tape, man says he killed to keep his family together

Confessing to Dallas police after the brutal slayings of his wife and her 6-year-old daughter, Gary Green said he felt betrayed when Lovetta Armstead asked for a divorce.

After only a few months of marriage, he decided he couldn't live without her.

"My original plan was to kill all of us," he said in the videotaped confession shown to jurors at his capital murder trial Wednesday. That way, he added, "in the afterlife we all could be a happy family."

Armstead and her daughter, Jazzmen Montgomery, were found dead in their south Oak Cliff home in September 2009. The woman was stabbed repeatedly, and the girl was tied up and drowned in the bathtub.

If convicted, Green faces the death penalty or life in prison without parole.

The prosecution rested its case Wednesday. The trial is expected to continue today.

Green's attorneys have asked jurors not to make up their minds until they hear all the evidence.

Homicide Detective Robert Quirk, who interviewed Green during the confession, testified Wednesday. He said investigators found Jazzmen in the bathroom and Armstead face down in the bedroom.

She'd been stabbed more than two dozen times, and signs of a struggle were apparent.

"Frankly, it was a bloody mess," Quirk said.

Green told police that he tied up the girl in her bedroom and then took her to the master bedroom. He attacked Armstead in the bathroom, he said, stabbing her "about 30 times," though not all at once.

At one point, prosecutors say, Armstead grabbed a toilet tank lid and tried to hit Green. She also grabbed a knife and stabbed him in the shoulder, though the wounds were superficial.

"When she stabbed me, I backed up off her," Green said.

Jazzmen was tied up during the fight. Afterward, he took her into the bloody bathroom, Green said in the taped interview.

"I killed her in the bathtub," he told police.

Armstead's two boys testified a day earlier that Green showed them the bodies but spared them when they pleaded for their lives.

Green, 39, said he put tape over Jazzmen's mouth to prevent her from doing the same.

Covered in blood, he showered in the same bathroom, changed clothes and picked up the boys from church, Green told the detective.

After showing the boys their mother, Green changed clothes again and left them at the house, he told police. He then took 20 to 30 pills in hopes that he would "just go to sleep."

But his family found him at a friend's house a day later and persuaded him to turn himself in.

Police Sgt. Kevin Kirchdorfer accompanied Green to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where he was treated for the overdose.

On the way, the sergeant testified, Green complained that he couldn't get the images of his wife and her child out of his head.

"I didn't really want to do anything to anybody," he said in his taped interview.

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