Pa. woman accused of killing fiance on wedding day

HOKENDAUQUA, Pa. (AP) — An east­ern Penn­syl­va­nia woman who was sup­posed to be spend­ing her first full day as a new­ly­wed was instead in jail Sun­day, accused of killing her fiance hours before they were to get mar­ried, author­i­ties said.

Na Cola Dar­cel Franklin, 31, was charged with crim­i­nal homi­cide in Sat­ur­day morn­ing stab­bing death of Billy Rafeal Brew­ster, 36, in their White­hall Town­ship apartment.

At her arraign­ment by video from jail Sat­ur­day, Franklin — appar­ently unable to grasp that he was dead — pleaded to the judge, “You got to check again!” accord­ing to the Morn­ing Call news­pa­per in Allentown.

After Dis­trict Judge Donna But­ler told her that Brew­ster had been pro­nounced dead ear­lier, Franklin wailed and cov­ered her face in her hands.

“I want my fam­ily back,” she said, rock­ing gen­tly back and forth. “I want to go home.”

When asked if she under­stood the homi­cide charge, Franklin wept and choked out the words one at a time.

“I … did … not … kill … him … on … pur­pose,” she said, accord­ing to the newspaper.

Franklin and Brew­ster were to be mar­ried at 10 a.m. Sat­ur­day, but police said they were called to the apart­ment shortly after 2 a.m. Sat­ur­day and found Brew­ster bleed­ing from the torso as he lay on the land­ing out­side his apart­ment. He was pro­nounced dead a lit­tle over an hour later at a hos­pi­tal, Dis­trict Attor­ney Jim Mar­tin said.

The Lehigh County coroner’s office said a pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tion revealed two stab wounds that resulted in a punc­tured heart.

Neigh­bor Steve Engel said the pas­tor who was sup­posed to per­form the cer­e­mony came to the build­ing after not being able to reach the cou­ple. He said oth­ers who were appar­ently going to the wed­ding also showed up at the build­ing through­out the day.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Aug 13 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.