A father could face the death penalty after killing his girlfriend in front of his daughter and forcing her to help him cut up her own mother’s body.
In an extraordinary court case in Memphis, the 15-year-old girl testified that she witnessed her own father, James Hawkins, 33, kill and dismember her mother, 28-year-old Charlene Gaither.
It took the jury just two hours to find Hawkins guilty of the murder in February 2008 after testimony from three of his own children. The jury will now decide whether he should be sentenced to death.
Outside the courtroom, relatives of Gaither wept loudly and hugged each other. A prosecutor said the jury clearly believed the children’s testimony.
‘They were completely truthful and forthright,’ prosecutor Jennifer Nichols said outside the courtroom.
Jesse Thomas, an uncle of Hawkins, said he had no other choice than to accept the jury’s verdict.
‘Justice has been done,’ Thomas said.
The chief witness against Hawkins was his 15-year-old daughter. She testified that when she was 12 she was repeatedly sexually abused by Hawkins, who had reconciled with Gaither after serving time in prison.
The girl said she saw her father stab and strangle her mother on February 9 2008. She said Hawkins threatened her with a knife to force her to help him put the body in a freezer and later cut it up. She was made to hold the head as Hawkins severed it, she added.
I don’t know … how you find this stuff, but geez