Cold-case witness testifies of husband threatening to kill wife

photo Adolphus Hollingsworth

A month before her disappearance, a witness testified Monday, Victoria Witherspoon Carr stood on her parents' Duncan Avenue porch and listened to threats tossed out by her husband, Adolphus Hollingsworth.

Hollingsworth shouted at her from the window of his car, Orville Hughes said. He cruised past again and again, making U-turns at the end of the street and circling back again. His elderly mother was with him.

"It was like something out of the blue I've never seen before in my life," Hughes, a family friend, testified Monday.

He told Carr he would hurt her, Hughes said. He told her he would kill her.

Carr, a mother of two, went missing in August 1997. Her body was found more than a year later. Police said she was stabbed to death.

Investigators had long suspected Hollingsworth in her killing, but by the time they arrested him 17 years after Carr's disappearance, her story had been featured on the show "Cold Justice" and become one of Chattanooga's best-known cold cases.

Hollingsworth was arrested in Texas but was released before his extradition to Tennessee thanks to a clerical error at the jail where he was held. U.S. marshals tracked him to an Ohio motel, where he was arrested again and charged with first-degree murder.

An Alabama woman also claimed Hollingsworth was married to her at the same time he was married to Carr. He was facing bigamy charges at the time of Carr's disappearance.

"I don't think he did it. I know he did it," Carr's brother, Kennith Witherspoon, said after Monday's pretrial hearing.

Witherspoon said his sister kept many aspects of her relationship with Hollingsworth private.

"I knew she was afraid of him," Witherspoon said.

Another witness who testified Monday said the same.

Carr and Hollingsworth fought at an East Ridge flea market he attended with them a week before her disappearance, Carr's friend Adolphus Mitchell testified.

Hollingsworth was angry with Carr because she'd gotten a new tattoo, Mitchell said. Afterward, she told him she wanted to leave Hollingsworth but was afraid.

But Hamilton County Division II Judge Rebecca Stern ruled Monday that portions of both Hughes' and Mitchell's testimonies could not be used when the case goes to trial.

Hughes testified that he picked up a bloody Carr from a parking lot about six months before her disappearance. She told him Hollingsworth had beaten her, he said, but he never saw the man. Assistant District Public Defender Steve Brown pointed out that Hughes couldn't have known who hit her before he picked her up, and also questioned how well he saw the driver who shouted at her that day on Duncan Avenue.

Stern said testimony on the parking lot incident would not be allowed unless prosecutors could find a witness who saw Hollingsworth that night. She also ruled out comments made by Carr to witnesses.

Hollingsworth is expected to appear in court again Oct. 27.

Contact staff writer Claire Wiseman at cwiseman@timesfreepress.com or at 423-757-6347.

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