'Justice,' 'closure' after guilty verdict in murder of Columbia woman

Howard County Police Det. Donald Guevara stepped into a Columbia apartment Sept. 7, 2010, walking past the gas can and lighter that had been used to set the place on fire, moving toward the body of a 37-year-old mother of four who had been stabbed more than 100 times.

"In my 24 years," he'd say later, "this is one of the most brutal cases I've ever seen."

Guevara left Howard County Circuit Court nearly a year later, Aug. 19, 2011, with a closed case — a guilty verdict for Damon Willie White, convicted of first-degree murder and first-degree arson in the death of his ex-wife, Thelma Wynn.

White, 36, is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 1. Prosecutors are seeking life in prison.

After a four-day trial, the 12-person jury needed just three hours of deliberations to find White guilty.

"Basically there was no question about the evidence," said jury member Kevin Naiker, 47, of Columbia. "The evidence was overwhelming."

Wynn's body was found in the master bedroom in her apartment on the 6000 block of Majors Lane in Long Reach. She had been cut and slashed at least 103 times, police later said, with wounds on her head and neck, her shoulders and back, her side, torso, hands and arms. A fire had been set in a nearby closet.

Firefighters arriving that afternoon found White before they discovered Wynn. He was unconscious on the floor of the dining room. Resting nearby were the gas can and lighter, and a large knife covered in blood. White was bleeding from what rescuers determined to be self-inflicted wounds on his wrist, chest and neck.

The front door had been barricaded from the inside with a large freezer. The detectives investigating the case believed White had killed Wynn and then tried to kill himself before setting the apartment ablaze.

White's defense attorneys conceded from the trial's outset that Wynn was murdered. But the act was not premeditated, they said, and therefore not first-degree murder.

In his closing argument, prosecutor James Dietrich told the jury that Wynn's wounds spoke for themselves. But the rest of the evidence, he said, painted a picture of what happened that day — and why.

Wynn and White had a son in 2003, married in 2006 and divorced in 2008. White had moved back in with her earlier that summer.

Wynn had been pregnant, and White thought the child was his, witnesses testified. Wynn had recently lost the baby and text-messaged the father, a boyfriend who lived in Baltimore.

"I am sooo sorry I lost our baby. I wanted ur baby so baddd," she wrote. .

When White was rescued from the building, Wynn's phone was found in his pocket. Prosecutors believe White discovered the text message later that morning.

'A killing instrument'

Dietrich told the jury that White attacked Wynn from behind as she was getting dressed. One shirt had numerous stab marks through it. Another, found on her arms over her head, had no such holes.

The prosecutor held the large knife, plastic wrapped around its handle, several times for the jury to look at as he spoke.

"This is a killing instrument," Dietrich said. "Not to cut meat. Not to butter your bread. This is the knife he chose to attack Thelma Wynn."

While prosecutors called a battery of witnesses to the stand during their case, including police officers, firefighters and relatives, White's attorneys called just one witness: a case manager with Saiontz & Kirk, a law firm that handles automobile accidents.

The case manager testified that, on the morning of Wynn's death, White had set up an appointment to see a physical therapist that afternoon — suggesting, the defense said, that the slaying was not premeditated.

White's attorneys also said the case against him could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Prosecutors could not prove what led to White attacking Wynn, defense attorney Mary Pizzo said in her closing argument. She argued that White went into a frenzied, adrenaline-rushed "fugue state." The state had not put everything together, though, she said, and "the puzzle was incomplete."

But prosecutors pointed to the size of the knife and to the amount of time it would take to get it and then to stab Wynn so many times. That showed the murder to be willful, deliberate and premeditated, Dietrich said, even if the decision to attack Wynn was made in mere moments.

After the verdict, Wynn's mother went walked down a hallway and spoke with prosecutors in a private room. She was joined by Wynn's aunt, Marlene Roberson.

"This was really hard," Roberson said. "Every day we came here was like rehashing it, especially witnessing the pictures. Now we can have closure."

As he left the courthouse in Ellicott City after the verdict, Det. Guevara said he was pleased to get justice for Wynn's family and for Wynn herself.

"That needed to be done," he said.