A 35-year-old man accused of killing his Little Rock parents told police he stabbed them after they first attacked him with knives because he had questioned them about the way they treated his 12-year-old sister.
In an interview with detectives recorded 10 hours after his parents' remains were found, Antonio Terrell Whitlow said he left their house with the girl, telling detectives she knew he had fought with their father but not that their parents had been seriously wounded.
Whitlow's trial started Tuesday on two counts of capital murder in the July 2012 slayings of his 65-year-old parents, Bobby and Annette Whitlow, and kidnapping in the purported abduction of his adopted sister, Amber Whitlow, now 15.
"All I wanted to do was see Amber and show her what it's like not to live in an abusive home," he told police the night after the slaying.
He said he left his parents knowing they were seriously wounded but did not call for help.
"It would have probably been common courtesy to call the police ... call to let them know something," Whitlow told police. "I should have called for medical attention."
The 39-minute recording is a key piece of the prosecution's case. Proceedings resume at 9 a.m. before Pulaski County Circuit Judge Barry Sims. Prosecutors are seeking a life sentence.
Whitlow has pleaded innocent by reason of insanity. He has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, based in part on treatment he received for mental illness in 2011 when he was institutionalized in Memphis for depression and psychotic symptoms that were diagnosed as schizoaffective disorder.
The criminal proceedings were stalled for about a year after state doctors initially declared him incompetent to stand trial in February 2013. He was eventually deemed fit for trial in March 2014.
To acquit Whitlow on mental health grounds, jurors will first have to find him guilty of the charges, then agree that mental illness prevented him from either being able to follow the law or control his impulses, chief deputy prosecutor John Johnson said during jury selection.
Both prosecution and defense warned potential jurors that photos of the couple, stabbed to death in their Zion Street home, would graphically show the violence they had been subjected to, with defense attorney Ron Davis calling the crime scene and autopsy pictures "gruesome."
Police began to hunt for Whitlow and his sister as soon as their parents' bodies were discovered, with the siblings found in Memphis walking on Beale Street near AutoZone Park baseball stadium. With FBI assistance, Little Rock detectives had traced Antonio Whitlow's cellphone, sending Memphis police to the area to search for them.
In a pretrial hearing during which the recording was played for the judge, lead Detective Bobby Martin testified that Antonio Whitlow seemed eager to speak with Little Rock police, describing how he had to stop Whitlow from talking so he could inform the suspect of his rights to remain silent and consult a lawyer.
"He wanted to talk to us, and at that point, I had to stop him to fill out his rights form," Martin said.
Whitlow did not seem mentally ill, drunken or under the influence of any drugs, the detective testified, describing Whitlow as "very personable, very forthcoming and very cooperative."
Asked about how much his sister knew about what had happened to their parents, Whitlow said she heard the fight but did not know the couple had been wounded seriously.
"Dad came at me with a knife and that's all she knows," he said.
Whitlow told police he'd gone to his parents' house to do his laundry. He said he entered the home and discovered that his sister had been locked in her room when he tried to greet her.
"I took it they didn't want me to get in there. That's what they do," he said. "They lock her in her room, and every time I say something about it, they always threaten to call the police on me. Today, it got out of hand, obviously."
The Whitlow parents were traveling evangelists who also presided over a small local congregation, and Antonio Whitlow told detectives his father yelled at him that they were raising the girl on Biblical doctrine and that he should respect that.
"He's yelling ... telling me again that I need to stay in the child's place and that she's their child and they're trying to raise her up in the Bible," Whitlow told the detective. "I'm telling him about how they going to get punished for the way they're treating this child of God."
He said the girl got "whooped" when she went out to play and that his parents didn't shield her from a neighbor who had picked on her.
Whitlow said a knife was brandished during the argument and that he and his father started fighting over the weapon. They were so close while they grappled that they could smell each other's breath, Whitlow said.
Whitlow said his mother, armed with her own knife, joined the fight just after his father had been stabbed.
"Now, by that time, he done got stabbed. My mother, she comes in with a knife talking about Jesus and speaking in tongues," he said in the interview. "So now it's me and mother. He's on the ground. He ain't even in the picture no more. It's me and my mom."
Whitlow said he knew he stabbed the woman in the face but didn't know where else she'd been wounded.
Asked by Detective Eric Knowles how long he kept stabbing her, Whitlow said, "I will put it like this, until she wasn't able to use hers."
With both of his parents on the floor, Whitlow said, his mother asked him for a towel.
"And I'm looking at her like a towel really not going to do much but what she was really saying is, you know, she was sorry. Or maybe she did want a towel," he said. "She also prayed for God to have mercy on me. Now that said a lot for her to say for God to have mercy. You know, because she's not a merciful person."
Whitlow also recalled for detectives how his father had called her to help him during their struggle "like a little punk or a little boy would call on their mother," pitching his voice high to mimic a child.
He said he took the two knives his parents had and threw them out of the car on the drive to Memphis. Whitlow also described for the officers how he had to change clothes at a chicken restaurant because he'd gotten so bloody.
He told detectives he didn't go to the home with the intention of hurting or killing the couple. Whitlow said he'd gotten along well with them, so well that they'd even sent him $100 a couple of days earlier.
"Really this whole damn thing surprised me," he said.
Metro on 04/01/2015