Wallingford/Jarlov Family Trees

Houston Chronicle, 16 September 1952, page 1.

Pretty Girl Stabbed And Garroted

A tight-lipped young railroad switchman maintained a stubborn silence Tuesday about the reason for the sudden burst of rage in which he strangled his pretty es-wife with an electric cord Monday night.

"She'd been lying to me," the 25-year-old killer, Daniel Pleas Parker, said over and over again to questioners at the police station, where he is held on a charge of murder. He would add no further explanation.

His victim was Mrs. Evelyn Allene Parker, also 25, a blue-eyed, blonde beautician, who had also once worked as a night club photographer.

Her body, in a bright crimpson strapless and backless gown, was found on a bed in Apartment 2 at 1219 West Gray by Homicide Detective B. Porter and W.W. Walker, who were led to the scene by Parker.

Completely around her neck was a thin blue discoloration, and beside her on the rumpled sheets was a six-foot-long cord to an electric fan. The fan had toppled to the floor from a chair beside the bed. Her dress and undergarments had been pulled down to her waist.

Also on the floor, the homicide officers said, was a small black-handled kitchen knife - its blade bent slight askew and blood. There was a small knife wound in her back on the left side.

Justice W.C. Regan, in whose court the murder charge against Parker was filed, said his Inquest indicated the young woman first had been stabbed in the back and, when the knife blade bent, the killer grabbed up the electric cord, still attached to the fan, and choked her to death with it.

There were small bruises about her chin and on her hands, as if she had fought vainly to prevent the cord from cutting off life-giving breath.

"Death was due to strangulation" Judge Regan said. "It was a killing in a burst of sudden rage."

Although Parker kept his own counsel as to the reason for his rage, he orally admitted to police and reporters that he had killed his ex-wife and told how he did it.

"I guess I did it on the spur of the moment," he told the Chronicle. "We were in the bedroom. Suddenly I yanked her on the bed. I grabbed one end of a cord to a fan she had sitting on a chair nearby and I wrapped it around her and tightened it. I don't remember seeing or using a knife.

"The next thing I recall was I came out of the apartment and I was sweating. I stood outside on the pavement I don't know how long."

He stopped and calmly puffed on a cigarette and a newsman interrupted:

"Do you think you will get the chair?"

Parker looked judiciously at the cigarette tip.

Could be, he said easily.

"I guess the state is going to spend some money on me.

"Old Man Ellis (Prison Director O.B. Ellis) will meet me at the gate and say, 'I've been waiting for you a long time.' I guess I'll get the reserved seat. I guess I'll have to pay. We have laws and I have violated one of them"

Then resuming his story, he said he and Mrs. Parker were married October 15, 1951.

"She got a divorce about three months ago, after we separated," he added. "Then about a month ago we made up and I came to her apartment to live with her. We planned to get married again."

Mrs. Parker had shared a two-bedroom apartment with Miss Joyce Marie Atkins, 24-year-old telephone operator.

Miss Atkins in a written statement to police said that Parker and his ex-wife had been reconciled about six weeks ago and he moved into Mrs. Parker's room.

She gave a dramatic account of how she reached the apartment in a taxicab, apparently shortly after Parker's wife was strangled.

"I saw Daniel standing in front of the apartment," she said. "He was calm and asked me to take him to Kelley's cafe in my cab. We both got in the back seat of the cab and I told the driver to take us there.

"While we were riding alone Daniel said, 'Well, Joyce! I did it." I asked what he meant. He said, 'I killed Allene.'

"I did not know what to think about what he had told me and was reluctant to believe him. When the cab got to Kelley's he got out without saying anything and went in. I told the cab driver to take me to 1930 West Dallas to the home of Allene's mother.

"But she was not there. I then went to her grandmother's house on Pecore and got her to come back with me to my house.

"When we got there, the police were already there. I went in and saw Allene lying on the bed and Daniel sitting in a chair. I asked why he did this and he just looked at the floor and didn't say anything."

Homicide Detective Porter, an acquaintance of Parker for a number of years, said he received a personal call from Parker shortly before midnight as he was on duty at the police station.

"Parker told me," Porter said, "to come to Kelley's cafe at 910 Texas to get him. I asked why I should. He replied, 'I murdered my wife about 30 minutes ago and I am now at Kelley's drinking coffee and I want you to come after me.'

"I asked him over the phone why he had killed her and he said, 'Oh! She was lying to me.' I then asked how he killed her and he replied calmly, 'I choked her to death with an electric cord and left her in our apartment at 1219 West Gray.'"

Detective Porter said he told Parker to wait for him and, without knowing whether the man's story was true or false, sped to the cafe with his partner, Detective Walker. Officer Porter added:

"We found Parker seated on a stool in front of the restaurant drinking coffee. He was neatly dressed in a light tan, small-check suit and tan hat. He did not look to me like a man who had just killed his wife.

"When he saw us, he asked if we wanted coffee. We told him it could wait until we finished our investigation, as we didn't know if his wife was really dead. Then he said, 'Well, come on! Let's go out there and get it over with.'

"We asked how he knew she was dead. And he replied that he had been in service in Europe in the last war and had seen a lot of dead people."

The officers added that they drove out to the West Gray apartment with Parker setting calmly and silently between them; that he led them straight to the first floor apartment, thrw back the French doors to his wife's bedroom, and stepped back and pointed.

"There she is," the two officers quoted him as saying to them.

In his account of the events leading up to the slaying, the railroad switchman told The Chronicle that he and his wife had aargued several times during the day Monday, and early in the night went to a grocery store and then returned to the apartment, where they argued again.

"I went to town," he continued, "and spent several hours. I had a couple of beers and I got home between 10 and 10:30 p.m., and we had another argument."

It was then, Parker added, that in a sudden rage he strangled her.

"Why?" he was asked then.

"She'd been lying to me," he said calmly, puffing on a cigarette.

Parker told reporters that Mrs. Parker had been married and divorced once before he met her. He said they met when he got out of the army in 1948, after serving four years, most of it in Europe.

The young woman's grandmother, Mrs. Mollie M. Hafer of 523 Pecore, confirmed that her granddaughter had been married and divorced twice. She, too, said the Parkers recently had been reconciled and planned to re-marry.