Posted on Fri, Jun. 16, 2006
BY PATRICK ORR, HEATH DRUZIN, SANDRA FORESTER AND EMILY SIMNITT
Knight Ridder Newspapers
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BOISE, Idaho - Alofa Time's violence tore two families apart, police say. The 50-year-old Nampa, Idaho, man is accused of beheading his estranged wife Thursday and hours later killing a mother and daughter in a horrific early morning car crash.
Time is in jail, charged with first-degree murder in the beheading and two counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of Samantha Murphy and her 4-year-old daughter Jaelynne Grimes, whose car Alofa Time slammed into on Franklin Road in West Boise. The severed head of Time's estranged wife, Theresa, was found at the crash scene; her body was later found at the couple's Nampa home.
Samantha Murphy was driving her children to day care Thursday morning, and then heading to work - just like any other day. But shortly before 6:30 a.m., a man driving a pickup truck east on Franklin Road swerved into the young family's westbound Nissan Sentra and hit them straight on.
A Boise police officer on his way to investigate another accident saw the truck driving erratically on Franklin Road, then witnessed the crash.
First responders tried to save Murphy, 36, and Jaelynne, 4, but it was too late. The mother and her daughter died at the scene, just a mile from their West Boise home. Another daughter, Syndee Murphy, 8, was taken to Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center.
Officers then turned their attention to a disoriented Alofa Time and his severely damaged truck. One wheel was off the pickup's front, and broken beer bottles littered the road, along with a radio, some tools and other debris.
Then officers made a grisly discovery: A severed female head lay on Franklin Road about 30 feet from the truck.
The head had apparently been thrown from the truck, and the passenger side of the truck bed was spattered with blood.
Police knew the head didn't come from a body at the scene.
Once he was in custody, Time told Boise police that he was involved in a murder in Nampa.
"It's as bad as you can imagine," said Michael Webb, a deputy chief with the Boise Police Department, at a news conference three hours after the accident. "We have a horrific piece of evidence."
The severed head, coupled with Time's statement to police, set off an investigation that led to the discovery of Time's estranged wife's headless body hours later in the couple's home.
By midday, police confirmed that they had found the body of 47-year-old Theresa N. Time sitting up in the driver's seat of a white passenger car parked in the garage.
Theresa Time told police this spring that she and Alofa had been together for 4 1/2 years and married last fall. She told police they divorced in January, but a Statesman search of public records found no report of their divorce.
In December, the couple bought the light tan, white-trimmed house in the 1800 block of Lotus Ponds Court. The sidewalk leading to their front door is lined with dark orange and yellow marigolds and decorative rocks.
Cecilie Santini, who lives a few doors down, said she thought that police had been to the home before to investigate domestic violence and that Alofa Time had a restraining order against him.
Court documents show Alofa Time was charged with misdemeanor domestic battery on March 19. Five days later, Theresa Time asked the judge to terminate a no-contact order that prohibited Alofa from talking to or meeting with her.
"We need to work things out and it's hard to do that with a no-contact order," she said in her request to the judge.
The judge required Theresa Time to attend domestic violence and safety planning courses at the Valley Crisis Center in Nampa before he would lift the no-contact order. According to police records, Theresa took five classes, and on May 30 the judge approved her request. more at link:
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/nation/14837134.htm