By Lawrence Buser
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
A former Memphis police officer charged with first-degree murder for the 2008 shooting death of his girlfriend “looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders” when summoned to headquarters for questioning, a jury was told this afternoon.
Chancy K. Jones initially was vague or silent during questioning, said newly named Deputy Director Toney Armstrong, but Jones then admitted shooting Phyllis Malone because she threatened to tell his wife about their two-month affair if he did not give her money.
Malone, 31, was found shot to death in her car around 6 a.m. on Sept. 9, 2008, at a Shell gas station at 1709 Whitten Road near I-40.
“It’s not everyday you get a police officer accused of murder,” Armstrong said when asked how he remembered the interrogation of Jones almost two years later. “When he came in he looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.”
Armstrong said Jones eventually opened up and gave police a five-page signed statement, part of which Armstrong was asked to read to the jury.
According to the defendant’s statement, Malone told Jones that she was pregnant and wanted money for the baby’s care and that she became upset when he told her he would think about it. She told him she would be paying a visit to his house the next day.
“’You’ll pay in the long run,’” Malone told him, according to Jones’s statement. “I asked her not to do it. She said, ‘Bye, Chancy.’ That’s when I pulled out a pistol and I shot her.”
The trial is being held before Criminal Court Judge W. Mark Ward.
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