DEL.ICIO.USTestimony ties wife to murder of husband
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thursday, August 21, 2008
A Gwinnett police detective testified at a preliminary hearing Thursday that Evelyn Fields-Earls, 52, shot her husband in the face and later told her adult stepdaughter, “I killed your daddy and put the gun in his hand.”
The stepdaughter, Melissa Earls, told investigators she walked into the Lawrenceville house the night of Aug. 13 and encountered her stepmother, who seemed startled, according to Detective Roy Mangrum of the Gwinnett County Police Department.
KIMBERLY SMITH / ksmith@ajc.com
Evelyn Fields-Earls at Thursday’s hearing with her attorney, Rob Greenwald.
After Fields-Earls allegedly uttered the incriminating statement, she bolted for the back door of their home on Amelia Grove Lane in Lawrenceville, Mangrum said.
A Lawrenceville police officer found Fields-Earls walking in the area a short time later and detained her.
Mangrum said that Fields-Earls had a historically rocky relationship with her husband of three years, 55-year-old Gary David Earls. Police had been called to the house seven or eight times since April. Earls filed for divorce that month, and the couple took out a mutual restraining order against each other in May, which was still supposed to be in effect, Mangrum testified.
Despite the restraining order, Fields-Earls told police that her husband allowed her to move back in with him and his daughter about three weeks prior to the shooting.
Mangrum testified that Fields-Earls admitted killing her husband when she was questioned at Gwinnett police headquarters, however she claimed the gun went off accidentally during a struggle.
The detective said Fields-Earls told police she was cooking in the kitchen when an unknown woman wearing nothing but a towel came walking out from another area of their home. Fields-Earls said that her husband then told her “he didn’t want her no more,” and went to fetch a gun from another room.
She reportedly said she grappled with her husband to get control of the gun. Fields-Earls told police that her husband dropped it, and that she picked it up and fired a shot at him.
At some point during police questioning, Fields-Earls requested a smoke break. Mangrum said it was then she asked how her husband was doing. When told he was dead, Mangrum stated “she rocked back and forth in her chair, and she grabbed her head.”
“She didn’t really show any other remorse than that,” Mangrum said.
Police reportedly found no evidence of another woman being in the home, nor any bruises or scrapes on Fields-Earls to indicate she had been in a scuffle.
Fields-Earls appeared unemotional throughout the detective’s testimony on Thursday. In the back of the courtroom, Melissa Earls also was listening. She and three other people who accompanied her all declined to talk to reporters after the hearing.
Gwinnett County Magistrate Judge Robert Mitchum found probable cause to bind over a murder charge against Fields-Earls to Superior Court. She is being held without bond at the Gwinnett jail.
