Katie Tammen
2010-08-18 11:13:09
MILTON — A woman charged with killing her husband 15 years ago pleaded guilty Tuesday to voluntary manslaughter.
Kimberly Mary Cannon, 42, was sentenced to 15 years in prison after she confessed to killing Daren Kelley with a hammer during a fight at their home. She buried his body on their property along Munson Highway north of Milton, according to a news release from the state attorney’s office.
Read about Cannon's arrest here »
Read a press release from state attorney's office »
Kelley was 23 years old when he was last seen in June 1995, less than a month after he married Cannon. He wasn’t reported missing until August 1998.
Cannon divorced Kelley, who was her third husband, in December 1995 after she claimed he “left her for parts unknown on June 12, 1995,” the news release said.
Cannon has been married five times.
After Kelley was reported missing in 1998, Santa Rosa County sheriff’s investigators searched the couple’s 13-acre property three times for his body but found nothing.
Investigators searched the property again in January 2008 and found a fibula leg bone. Its DNA matched Kelley’s mother and brother.
The fibula was the only body part found, according to the news release.
The investigation later revealed that Cannon had items she claimed Kelley had taken when he left her. She also had been sending forged letters to his mother.
Cannon had been jailed on unrelated charges years before the leg bone was discovered. She was sentenced to prison for several charges in Escambia County including burglary, grand theft and fraud, according to the Florida Bureau of Prisons’ website.
Inmates who were in prison with Cannon from 1996 until 2007 told officials that she said she killed Kelley, dismembered his body and buried it, the release stated.
She was out of prison in 2008 and living in Leon County when she was arrested for killing Kelley. She also was charged with battery, resisting arrest and escape after she slipped out of her handcuffs and tried to bite a sheriff’s deputy and take his gun, the news release said.
Cannon was sentenced to prison on those charges before she was brought to Santa Rosa County to face the murder charge.
Cannon admitted to killing Kelley as part of a plea agreement. In exchange for the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter, Cannon had to tell officials how she killed Kelley.
Assistant State Attorney Bobby Elmore said the state decided to offer her the deal based on the age of the case and the additional prison time she already was facing for the battery charge in 2008 and for violating her probation from the Escambia County case.
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