By Kacie Breeding
Published January 28th, 2011 | Added January 28th, 2011 4:11 am
BLOUNTVILLE — A Bristol man on trial in a Blountville court this week for allegedly stabbing his estranged wife and killing her boyfriend testified Thursday that he “blacked out” and does not recall much about the incident.
Howard Brackson Carrier, 47, 1014 Vermont Ave., Bristol, Va., is charged with premeditated and felony first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder and aggravated burglary.
The charges allege that on Dec. 10, 2008, he broke into his wife’s apartment at 133 Hilltop St., Bristol, Tenn., then killed Jeffrey Washburn, 41, of Gray, and stabbed Brenda Carrier when the couple arrived about 5:30 a.m.
According to testimony from retired forensic pathologist Dr. William McCormick, the Buck knife recovered from the road in front of the apartment would be consistent with the type of knife that caused 10 cut or stab wounds to Washburn’s body.
McCormick said the worst of Washburn’s injuries involved a single stab wound that indicated a knife passed first through his ninth thoracic vertebra and then into approximately 80 percent of his aorta. Washburn would have died within minutes, if not seconds, of receiving these injuries, he said.
Howard Carrier testified Thursday that he went to his wife’s apartment to talk to her about their eldest son, Cordell Carrier, then 22. He said he had called her while sitting in his truck in his own driveway at 4:56 a.m., and she told him she was home.
Earlier this week, Brenda Carrier testified she did not tell her husband that she was home that morning.
When he arrived at her apartment, Howard Carrier said he parked his Ford F-150 pickup in front of his wife’s car, which he said was parked “40 or 50 feet” from the front door. He denied parking in an adjacent field where, according to testimony, the pocketknife he allegedly used to stab Brenda Carrier was later recovered.
Cordell Carrier testified that in the months prior to the incident, his father repeatedly pressed him for information about where his mother was living and whether she was seeing anybody else.
On Thursday, Howard Carrier denied doing — or needing to do — either of those things. He said he knew where she lived and had visited there before, and that he had taken her at her word when she said she was not seeing anyone.
He denied going to her apartment on Dec. 10, 2008, because he thought she was with a man, although he admitted that was why he had barged into her apartment uninvited on Nov. 25, 2008. An aggravated assault charge for that alleged offense is still pending.
When he arrived and she did not answer the door, Howard Carrier said he kicked in the door and went in to look for her.
“I thought something was wrong with my wife,” he testified.
He said he used a cigarette lighter to look around inside because he did not know where the light switch was.
He denied sweeping the broken glass and door frame pieces into the corner behind the door, moving a heater from the bathroom to the kitchen, sitting and waiting in a kitchen chair, or hiding the sheath to his Buck knife in a kitchen drawer. He also denied ever having seen a knife sharpener that was later found in a storage ottoman.
Howard Carrier said he was on his way out of the apartment when he heard someone on the porch.
“I saw it was my wife and some man,” he said.
“First, my wife said, ‘That’s my husband, we need to go.’ I said, ‘What’s going on here?’ He (Washburn) said, ‘I don’t have time for this, I gotta go to work.’ I said, ‘That’s not what I asked you. I asked if you were the one that’s f...... my wife.’ He said, ‘Every chance I get.’ ”
That’s when he started to fight with Washburn, Howard Carrier said.
“I just remember starting to fight. I don’t remember much ’cause I blacked out, kinda like, I guess.”
Carrier attributed his lack of memory to a possible blood pressure spike, advising he had been on medication for hypertension for the past 15 years. He also admitted having smoked crack cocaine just hours before the incident.
“The next thing I remember is when the girl screamed out for me to ‘Get the f... out of the apartment,’ ” Carrier said.
Patsy Kendrick, a neighbor, testified previously that she dragged a bleeding Brenda Carrier from the apartment after hearing her screams and running to her aid.
Two of the state’s three rebuttal witnesses were Bristol Tennessee Police Department officers who guarded Howard Carrier while he was at Holston Valley Medical Center.
Lt. Jerry Smelser testified about a conversation he overheard between Howard Carrier and a nurse. First, the nurse asked Howard Carrier about his injuries, and he told her he had “done these to himself,” Smelser said.
Howard Carrier also told the nurse about stabbing another man, Smelser said.
“He said he was pretty sure that he’d killed him because he bled buckets and buckets.”
Smelser said the nurse then asked Carrier “something about the wife and did he mean or try to kill her.”
“He said, ‘I must’ve, I stabbed her four or five times.’ ”
Smelser admitted he had no way of knowing what medication Howard Carrier might have received prior to making those statements.
Officer Mike Steele’s testimony concerned statements Howard Carrier allegedly made to him while he was guarding him at HVMC after the incident.
“I asked him if his, how bad he was injured, and he told me that his injuries were self-inflicted, and he’d stabbed himself in the heart four times, cut his wrists, and cut his neck because he thought that he’d killed them both. He told me that he’d stuck — and he didn’t say who it was, he just said he stuck him — and he was bleeding like a stuck pig,” Steele said.
Sullivan County Assistant District Attorney Gene Perrin asked him if Howard Carrier said anything about taking care of a problem, and Steele responded, “Well he said he’d taken care of his problem earlier that day.”
When questioned by Sullivan County Public Defender Steve Wallace, Steele acknowledged he heard Howard Carrier make three additional statements when Wallace asked him, “Did he not tell you ‘We were married for 25 years and I told her to wait until we weren’t married’?”
Then, “Did he tell you, ‘I guess she didn’t feel that way’?”
And finally, “ ‘You shouldn’t sleep with another man’s wife’?”
The trial will resume with closing arguments this morning.
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