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October 26, 2009

Murder trial begins for man accused of shooting his wife

By Roger McKinney

rmckinney@joplinglobe.com

COLUMBUS, Kan. — Carly Jarman told a Cherokee County jury on Monday about spending her brother’s birthday with him and her parents at her grandparents’ house.

She told of picking up the cake with her mother at Dairy Queen, of the special dinner that her grandmother prepared, and of having cake and ice cream after dinner.

She also told the jury about receiving a frantic call from her father after he and her mother had left the party, about having to wait outside her house and receiving text messages that someone had been shot, and about worrying about her ailing father who was sobbing and trembling with emotion.

Carly Jarman, 20, was among the witnesses testifying on the first day of the trial of her father, Robert Jarman, on a charge of second-degree murder in the Aug. 22, 2007, shooting death of her mother, Suzanne Jarman. Suzanne Jarman died in a bedroom at the couple’s home at 1105 W. Country Road, just outside Columbus. She was 42.

The daughter said the birthday dinner for her brother, Tyler, was during her first week of college, but she was still living at home with her parents.

Gun safe

Carly Jarman said her dad took care of finances for another grandmother, Virginia Bailey, her mom’s mother. She said that after dinner, opening presents and having cake and ice cream, her mom and dad excused themselves. They said they had to get $850 of Bailey’s money that her father kept in his gun safe.

Carly Jarman said that while she was still at her grandparents’ house, she received a frantic phone call from her father. She had explained earlier about the respiratory ailment that requires her father to be on supplemental oxygen.

“He said, ‘Get over here, get over here,’” she said. “I thought something was wrong with my dad.”

She said that when she arrived at the house with her grandmother, Leah Brassart, she was met at the door by a police officer who told them they couldn’t enter. She said he forced them outside and threatened to arrest them if they tried to enter.

Text messages

Carly Jarman said that as they waited outside, unaware of what was going on inside, she began receiving text messages on her cell phone from friends asking if she was OK and if she had been shot. She said she sent messages back saying she thought something had happened to her dad.

“Everybody else had already heard somebody had been shot,” she said.

She later learned that her mother was dead, and she sat beside her father outside the house.

“He was crying,” she said. “He was shaking and trembling. He didn’t have his oxygen. I was more worried because he didn’t have his oxygen.”

After her dad was taken to the local hospital, she said, she returned to her grandparents’ house to tell her brother that their mother was dead.

Officer’s testimony

Thomas Helm, a Columbus police officer, also took the stand. He was the first officer to arrive at the scene, and the officer who demanded that Carly Jarman and her grandmother remain outside.

He said he could hear Robert Jarman’s wails before he entered the house.

“I heard somebody repeatedly saying, ‘Don’t leave me. Stay with me,’” Helm said.

When he entered the bedroom, he said, he saw Robert Jarman straddled across his wife’s body. He said Suzanne Jarman was on her back, face up. He said it was obvious that she was dead.

“He was holding both sides of her cheeks and holding what was left of his wife there,” Helm said.

During testimony from Tommy Dietz, who was evidence custodian for the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Department at the time, the prosecution displayed some photographs of the grisly scene, including some of Suzanne Jarman’s body.

Dietz described blood, body tissue, hair and skull fragments.

Robert Jarman’s 911 call also was played for the jury. In it, he said he was handing a shotgun to his wife from the gun safe, and the shotgun went off.





Potential witnesses

Witnesses today may include forensic pathologist Erik Mitchell, who performed the autopsy on Suzanne Jarman, and a Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent who specializes in blood spatter.

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