Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 13, 1994 TAG: 9405130110
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Brown, who received the sentence from Roanoke Circuit Judge Clifford Weckstein, testified that Teresa Darnell Tucker, 32, broke her promise to him that she would stop drinking and using cocaine.
"I felt deceived by her" when Tucker came home early Nov.25 after a night of partying, Brown, 43, testified.
During the argument that followed, Brown said, "I just went to pieces ... she tore me apart."
In a statement to police, Brown said he held a pillow over Tucker's face until she was dead. He said he was looking at a clock and remembered the exact time - 3:50 a.m. - that she stopped struggling.
Brown then spent more than 24 hours in the Southeast Roanoke apartment with the body before turning himself in to police.
Autopsy tests showed that Tucker had been drinking and using cocaine shortly before her death, but her actions that night "certainly did not rise to the death penalty" that Brown imposed, Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Mac Doubles said.
Doubles asked that Brown be sentenced to life in prison for the "cold-blooded and ruthless" killing.
But Assistant Public Defender Marian Kelley asked Weckstein to consider Tucker's drinking and drug use as one of many mitigating circumstances in the case.
"I know the Tucker family may not want to remember her that way," Kelley said, "and they may not have known her that way. But Mr. Brown did...''
Earlier this year, Brown pleaded guilty to first-degree murder.
Testimony has shown that he went to the Roanoke Police Department the day after Thanksgiving and said he had some information about a homicide. After telling police he had killed his girlfriend, Brown handed them the keys to the apartment and told them where they could find her body.
Authorities found Tucker's body at an apartment in the Indian Village housing project. She appeared to have been dead for about a day.
In his statement to police, Brown said he did not want a lawyer and asked to be put to death by lethal injection.
Asked why he waited more than a day to report Tucker's death, Brown said he first tried to kill himself by drinking alcohol mixed with bleach.
When that didn't work, he told authorities, he decided to turn himself in.
Tucker, described by friends and family as a hard-working nursing assistant and a loving mother, had been dating Brown and allowing him to live at the apartment for about five months.
Brown, who served in the Air Force and had one prior conviction for assault, will be eligible for parole after serving about eight years of his sentence, Doubles said.
Keywords:
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by CNB