Trial begins in killing of mother in Edgewood
Prosecution airs 911 call, bizarre contact with police
Testimony began Thursday in a first-degree murder trial for an Edgewood man accused of stabbing his 87-year-old mother to death at their home and then dousing the scene in bleach.
Felita Marlene Farley was a well-loved mother, grandmother and church member, Chief Deputy District Attorney Anthony Long told jurors.
She was tall for a woman, 5-foot-8, and “had a personality to match,” the prosecutor said in his opening statement. “Her and her late husband took in three boys, all brothers, and raised all three,” Long said. One of the brothers, Brian Farley, is now “on trial for her murder,”
“The evidence in this case will show you the extreme level of brutality and cruelty that Brian Farley unleashed on his mother,” Long said.
“After he stabbed her, he left her half-naked body to bleed to death on a bathroom floor. After he stabbed her to death, he tried and failed to clean the murder scene with bleach. He then tried to hide that bloody knife in a kitchen sink,” he added.
Farley had told police he was protecting himself from his mother, who had been shooting at him, according to videos.
Long said family members who cleaned the home will testify, however, they found no bullet holes in the home, and a gun officers found on the victim’s bed came apart when they tried to move it and was “basically inoperable.”
Brian Farley’s defense attorney, Jonathan Schildgen, told jurors the case isn’t as simple as the state’s portrayal and they should expect to hear testimony that “might be contrary” to that presented by prosecutors.
“One thing just off the top of my head is, does the gun fall apart?” Schildgen said. “Is it inoperable? Well, the FBI fires the gun and it works just fine. So, that’s not completely true.”
He added, “Hiding the knife in the sink? It’s in the sink covered in blood. You’ll see the pictures. Whether or not that would be deemed hiding, I guess, would be for you to decide.”
Another thing the state failed to mention, the defense attorney said, was Farley’s level of intoxication “that was noted by every officer that came into contact with him.”
“They were making comments that there is something not right with him,” Schildgen said.
He also questioned the police work on the case.
One of the investigators had never handled a murder case before, he said,
adding family members were allowed to visit the scene and take items from the home before officers were finished collecting evidence.
If anything, Schildgen said, police body camera video will show “a completely chaotic and irrational environment.”
“And then you’ll be left to ask yourself: Is this a spontaneous response to a crisis or is this some deep, profound brooding individual?” he said. “All I can say about that is I’m fairly confident that we as societies have known for 10,000 years what murder is, and I think that you’ll have serious doubts about that, no matter how tragic, graphic this is. We know what that means, certainly, for first-degree murder, and right now, Brian sits here innocent. That’s the law. It’s not a legal fiction.”
One of the first pieces of evidence the state presented was a recording of the 911 call Farley made after his adoptive mother’s slaying.
Farley is blubbering unintelligibly for most of the call.
“My mom, she has a knife and she hurt herself,” he tells the operator between sobs and wails.
“I just opened the door and she was laying there dead, and she doesn’t respond,” Farley adds while continuing to weep uncontrollably.
The operator repeats his name in an attempt to get him to answer more questions, but Farley provides little information and continues sobbing before going silent.
Edgewood police Officer Dean Salazar testified he and another officer knocked on the front door of the home when they arrived, but no one responded.
They went to a side door and then eventually to the back of the home, where Salazar looked inside a window, he said. “There was someone laying down on the floor face down.”
Farley came out of the home, according to police video, and began talking to officers in heavily slurred speech.
“She said that I was a bad person and she began shooting, shooting everything,” he said.
“I’m sorry I’ve been drinking a little bit,” he adds. “I apologize.”
He says at one point, “I tried to protect myself. … She was shooting me.”
Jurors also heard testimony from a brother who said their mother’s will listed Brian Farley as the person who would inherit the Edgewood home where she had lived with him.
Farley’s trial is scheduled to last through Tuesday.