A 40-year-old woman who beat a North Little Rock man to death with a pair of glass ashtrays has accepted a 35-year prison sentence for the slaying, the second time she has killed a man.
Keebie Lanette Jackson pleaded guilty Tuesday to first-degree murder, reduced from capital murder, for the August 2017 slaying of 59-year-old Tyrone Tatum in his West M Avenue apartment. Jackson's mother, LaMelda Sims Carey, told authorities that her daughter barely knew Tatum and had just moved in with him the day before he was killed.
State doctors diagnosed Jackson with psychotic disorder from hyperthyroidism, substance-induced psychotic disorder and cocaine abuse, but found that she was in her right mind and knew the difference between right and wrong when she killed Tatum, according to a mental evaluation filed last month in Pulaski County Circuit Court.
Police were called to Tatum's home about an hour before sunrise when a friend, Gregory Allen Swanson, 49, called for help after finding Tatum's front door open and seeing blood spattered across the apartment, according to arrest reports.
Tatum was found dead in the bathroom, leaning against the door with his head heavily battered and cut. Medical examiners couldn't say how many times he had been struck, but they estimated he'd been hit at least 50 times. His car was missing.
Investigators found two large, broken and bloody glass ashtrays, the pieces scattered from the living room to the kitchen, that they presumed to be the murder weapons, and they also discovered Jackson's purse on a kitchen table.
Detectives found Tatum's car with a man named Robert Battles, who said a woman had traded him the car for crack cocaine, according to authorities. Battles said he found a bloody shirt in a bag in the car.
Police caught up to Jackson at 2908 E. Second St. about eight hours after Tatum's body was found, according to the arrest report. She has been jailed ever since.
In an interview with North Little Rock detective Joe Green, Jackson said that Tatum had attacked her, hitting and choking her, and that she had struck back with the ashtrays, estimating she had hit him about six times to get away.
Tatum was bleeding heavily but was alive when she left the apartment, she said.
Asked to show how Tatum attacked her, Jackson could not show any marks or injuries, court filings show.
Blood evidence, the location of the broken ashtray pieces and the way Tatum's body was found, leaning against the door of the bathroom, led police to believe that Tatum had been attacked in the living room and then made his way to the bathroom where he tried to lock himself in but could not.
Jackson later said that she and Tatum had been drinking and taking drugs and that he had gotten angry with her and grabbed her by the throat when she tried to leave, so she hit him with the ashtrays. She said she blacked out and when she came to, a bleeding Tatum was lying on the floor, so she left.
Hempstead County circuit court records show that Jackson, then 23 and living in Perrytown, beat her husband, Christopher A. Jackson, to death in November 2001 with a piece of concrete cinder block while he was sleeping.
Keebie Jackson, who was on probation at the time for residential burglary and theft, pleaded guilty as charged to second-degree murder in May 2002 in exchange for a 10-year prison sentence that was to be followed by a 10-year suspended sentence.
In July 2007, Jackson, then living in Hope, was arrested on robbery and theft charges after she attacked a woman, Panda Wieweck, who was giving her a ride. Wieweck ran from her car to get away from Jackson, who drove away in the vehicle, court files show.
The next month, Jackson pleaded guilty to robbery and theft in exchange for a 15-year prison sentence that was to be followed by a five-year suspended sentence.
Court records show that Tatum had killed, too. In August 1988, Tatum, then 30 and living in Malvern, stabbed his cousin, 38-year-old Donald Ray Duncan, to death with a pocketknife during a fight in a vacant lot on North Banks Street in Malvern.
Tatum was charged with second-degree murder, but at his trial two months later, a Hot Spring County jury reduced the charge to manslaughter and sentenced him to 10 years in prison, the maximum penalty.
Details of the slaying were not available, but, according to a letter in his court file from his lawyer, Tatum argued that he had been protecting himself.
"As we have discussed numerous times since the action by the jury, I am not aware of any reversible error in the trial. You killed Donald Ray Duncan and admitted to the killing. The central question was whether or not the jury felt that your actions were justified as self-defense," attorney George Hopkins wrote. "With the numerous eyewitnesses and testimony presented, the jury had more than adequate chances to evaluate whether or not such action was justified. We got in all evidence that we wished to get in. The prosecutor did not get in any evidence which we wanted to get out. I made no objection that can be overturned by the appeals court."
In September 1997, Tatum was arrested on a rape charge by Malvern police after a female friend accused him of choking her and forcing himself on her after she had refused his sexual advances after a day of drinking together with friends. He was acquitted at trial in July 1998.
Metro on 11/15/2018