By BOB GARDINIER, Staff writer
First published: Tuesday, March 23, 2010
TROY -- During more than three hours of vigorous and repetitive questioning by homicide detectives investigating his girlfriend's death, Daiman Burkett simply repeated nonsense statements over and over.
Three detectives took turns trying to get statements from Burkett the day after Des-Hawn Parker, 32, was found strangled Feb. 26, 2009, in her bed in the Lansingburgh home she shared with her two young children.
The tape of the interrogation made at police headquarters was shown Monday during pretrial hearings for Burkett's upcoming second-degree murder trial.
Police said Burkett was angry after Parker broke up with him.
After emergency personnel came to Parker's home early that morning, Burkett, with slashes to his wrists, legs and chest, stood barefoot and shirtless in the snow wielding a knife outside the victim's home, not allowing police or emergency personnel to enter. He had to be subdued with a stun gun, and was treated for superficial injuries at Albany Medical Center Hospital.
Inside, Parker's children told detectives their mother was in her bedroom in the basement. Officials found her faceup on the bed. She had been strangled.
Detectives, including Sgts. John Colaneri and Ronald Epstein, repeatedly asked Burkett what happened.
''I went down there. No one was at home. I was out in the snow,'' Burkett kept repeating.
When asked where Parker was, Burkett repeated ''She'll be here in a couple of minutes.''
At one point, he got into a back-and-forth argument with Colaneri, who said, ''No, Daiman, she's dead,'' to which Burkett replied: ''No, she'll be here in a few minutes.'' The two went back and forth until they were both yelling very loudly, but Burkett stuck to his statement.
''You killed her, then you felt bad and cut yourself, didn't you Daiman?'' Colaneri said to the man.
Burkett responded with the phrase ''I'm here, boys,'' and ''Thank you, guys,'' which he also repeated again and again during the interview.
At one point, detectives showed Burkett a photograph of Parker's body, even pushing it into his face as he tried to look away, but they said he kept repeating that Parker would ''be here in a couple of minutes.''
In diary entries written by Parker less than a month before her murder and on file with the court, she told of being brokenhearted and trapped in a turbulent, loveless relationship with a verbally abusive Burkett.
She wrote that she and her friends started to jokingly referred to Burkett as ''Demon.''
"Just yesterday, I felt like committing myself to a hospital," she wrote in one letter. "I just don't feel like I am on the same planet as everyone else."
The pretrial hearings resume today before Judge Robert Jacon.
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