Doug Guthrie / The Detroit News
Detroit— A man charged with killing his blind girlfriend and keeping her plastic-wrapped body under his bed for weeks heard testimony Tuesday from a woman who said she had sex with the man in the same bed and complained about a strong odor.
"I went in and I said, 'Oh! It smells like mildew in here,'" Gloria Houston testified at a hearing where Gregory Harris, 51 faces second-degree murder charges in the city's 36th District Court. "'Why you got a fan up in the window in January?' He says, 'To kill the scent.'"Houston said she spent the entire night with Harris in late January, despite the strong smell.
Detroit police say Zilphia Craig, 47, had been dead for weeks when they found her decomposing body Feb. 2 under the bed in an apartment on Woodward. She had been reported missing Jan. 19 from her own Detroit apartment building, where Harris met her working for his brother's pest control company.
Detroit Police homicide investigator Donald Olsen testified Harris told police Craig had stayed with him for three days before she demanded drugs. When he refused to get them for her, she knocked herself unconscious attempting to run from the apartment wearing nothing but his T-shirt, Olsen said.
Harris told police that Craig tripped in the hallway and struck her head and was bleeding. He attempted CPR to revive her, then panicked when he realized she was dead, he said.
Harris told the detective he left her lying in the apartment for three days before riding a bus to a Home Depot where he bought plastic bags he used to wrap Craig and slide her under the bed.
Harris told Olsen he panicked because he had failed to register his latest change of address with the Michigan State Police maintained online Sex Offender Registry. Harris was convicted in Detroit in 1995 of multiple charges of second-degree criminal sexual conduct.
But Harris' brother, James Harris, testified Tuesday that he admitted killing Craig with a blow to the head.
"He looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, 'Bro, I (expletive) up,'" James Harris told Judge Ruth Carter. "'I killed her. … I killed the blind girl.'"James Harris told the judge that his brother told him how he struck Craig and then discovered no life signs the next morning. James Harris said he called police only after later hearing on television that Craig was missing.
"If he did that he must pay," James Harris told the judge.
Members of Craig's family, including her 24-year-old son Jonveil Craig left the courtroom Tuesday in tears.
"She wasn't on drugs. She was diabetic," said Craig's brother, Kasceen Anderson. "That's how she went blind in 2002. She took medication twice a day and if she was with him for three days the drugs she needed were her medications."
When the hearing is due to resume next week, Carter will determine if there's enough evidence to order Gregory Harris to trial.
No comments:
Post a Comment