A 26-year-old Little Rock woman who fatally stabbed her father 16 times accepted a 30-year prison sentence Wednesday.
Abandoning an insanity defense, Jacklynn Kayla Murphy pleaded guilty before Pulaski County Circuit Judge Barry Sims to second-degree murder, reduced from first-degree murder, for killing 53-year-old Gary Don Murphy, said senior deputy prosecutor Melanie Martin.
Little Rock police found Gary Murphy dead and wrapped in a bloody blanket in the kitchen of his David O. Dodd Road home in August 2014, Martin said.
He had been stabbed in the back, chest, neck and hip, with his right foot partially severed, the prosecutor said. He'd been dead for some time, and two of the wounds were inflicted after after death.
Jacklynn Murphy had been scheduled to stand trial next week, and her attorney, Cheryl Barnard, had filed notice that Murphy would argue that she was innocent by reason of mental disease.
State doctors who examined Jacklynn Murphy had found her competent to stand trial and did not find her to be mentally ill.
They reported that she was exaggerating symptoms of mental illness, but they also documented that she had a history of erratic behavior, anger problems, drug abuse, sexual abuse, occasional homelessness, suicidal thoughts and psychiatric treatment that included previous diagnoses of bipolar disorder and psychosis.
Arrested at the front door of her father's home, Murphy declined to speak with investigators, who reported she was murmuring to herself as if she was having a conversation with someone, court files show.
Police had been directed to the residence by Murphy's mother, 61-year-old Cheryl Gregory of Bigelow, who is Gary Murphy's ex-wife and who financially supported the two.
Gregory told authorities she had last seen both two days earlier but had become concerned when she couldn't reach Gary Murphy by telephone.
She said she had talked to Jacklynn Murphy by phone the day before the killing and was concerned because her daughter sounded upset and said she was hearing voices that told her to kill Gregory, according to court files.
Gregory called police after subsequently reaching Jacklynn Murphy by phone. When she asked Murphy where her father was, the daughter said she had killed her father, court files show.
No one would answer the door when police knocked and announced themselves, but one officer, looking through a window at the rear of the home, made eye contact with Jacklynn Murphy as she hid in the living room. She then opened the front door at the officer's command.
When the door opened, police could see smeared blood on the kitchen floor behind her and took Murphy into custody before finding her father's body in the kitchen.
Metro on 03/31/2016