Johnson City, TN: Larkin's stepdaughter takes stand, says he acted strange after wife's death

By NATE MORABITO
Published: January 25, 2011
Tia Gentry cried several times in court as she recalled the night she found her mother’s lifeless body inside a bathtub at the family’s Johnson City home on November 18, 2003.

“I shook her and she didn’t move,” Gentry said of her mother Teri Larkin.

Gentry was the first witness called by prosecutors to testify against Dale Larkin Tuesday. Larkin is charged with first-degree murder and two counts of insurance fraud in connection to the death of his wife. Johnson City police arrested him in 2009 after exhuming Teri Larkin’s body and moving forward with a second autopsy that revealed a possible homicide.

“(The medical examiner) has found that this woman suffocated to death basically (with some blunt force trauma),” Assistant District Attorney Dennis Brooks told jurors during opening arguments. “There’s injuries to the front side of this woman, the right side of this woman, the back side of this woman, and the left side of her. Every side you look at there’s injuries. There’s only one explanation that covers that entire chart and it’s homicide.”

Larkin's attorney argued there is an explanation for each one of those injuries. For one, Mark Slagle said Larkin performed CPR on the woman after his stepdaughter found her.

"Dale pulled her out of the tub and he was rough with her," Slagle told jurors. “He drops one arm, she falls, hits her head.”

According to Slagle, the woman's past medical conditions could have led to her death. He also reminded the jury that Gentry, now 18, has changed her story three times in the last seven years.

Still, Gentry told the jury what she says she remembers today.

“He didn’t come running like I would assume somebody would,” Gentry said of Larkin after she told him her mother was unresponsive. “He just walked up there…I went into his room one night (several days later) and asked him if he thought maybe somebody poisoned mom or something and he got very defensive about it. He kept asking me who put that in my head.”

Although family members of the victim were in court today, there were twice as many people sitting behind the defendant. If convicted of first-degree murder, Larkin could face a sentence of up to life in prison. According to his attorneys, Larkin plans on testifying in his own defense during this tria