Jury finds man guilty of murder in fatal 2015 stabbing
Multiple witnesses to a 2015 deadly stabbing attack in a quiet neighborhood in northeastern Travis County identified the attacker as a black man with dreadlocks, standing under 6 feet tall.
Christopher Harris testified Thursday at his murder trial that the real assailant was an intruder that he didn’t know. But two other men who were in the house that Aug. 7 evening said it was him. The jury accepted their story. Needing nearly two hours to sort through evidence in the fatal stabbing of the home’s owner, 44-year-old Byron Roberson, a Travis County jury of four men and eight women returned a guilty verdict early Thursday evening. Harris faces a sentence of up to life in prison when the jury returns Friday for the trial’s punishment phase.
Harris — who rented a room from Roberson, an affable cable TV salesman in Pflugerville — took the witness stand Thursday and insisted he was a victim himself, saying that cuts to his hand and thigh got there from the same person who killed Roberson and injured two other roommates, including Roberson’s adult son. The real attacker, Harris said, wore dreadlocks and stood about 5 feet, 10 inches tall — a description that matched the 30-year-old Harris on the night of the murder.
“The story he told actually happened,” prosecutor Leslie Booker told the jury in closing arguments.