Patricia Kaye Wilkey, 52, sits at the defense table during the first day of testimony in her first-degree murder trial in Rhea County, Tennessee, where she is accused in the slaying of Thomas Richard "Skipper" Wilkey in April 2017.DAYTON, Tenn. - Closing arguments will begin Friday in the Rhea County murder trial of Patricia Kaye Wilkey, charged with shooting and killing her husband in their home.
Wilkey, 52, took the stand Thursday morning in her own defense, painting an image of her and her now-dead husband's married life as a rollercoaster ride of emotions and turmoil. She was arrested the day of the shooting in April 2017.
Patricia and Skipper Wilkey had known each other since childhood and got married, with parental permission, when she was 17 years old, according to testimony under direct examination by her lawyer, Marty Lasley. She'd been married four times, twice to Skipper Wilkey, once to another man who was killed in an automobile accident and once to another man for only 30 days before the union was annulled.
During this period, Patricia Wilkey was involved in an automobile accident and was severely injured, leaving her with lifelong debilitating injuries, including traumatic brain injury, and was on a regimen of numerous prescribed pain medications ever since, she testified. She said she was on about 10 prescribed medications on the day she shot her husband twice in the head on April 24, 2017.
She testified about her husband's mental changes during their marriage, which she described as "random crazy stuff" that had no basis in reality and talking to people who were not there.
This development led to what has been described in earlier testimony as a "psychotic episode" that landed Skipper Wilkey in the hospital for treatment. She testified that her husband was mean when he was drinking and it didn't take much to change his demeanor.
"I would joke around with him that it could touch his tongue ... " she testified.
She admitted she'd lied to Rhea County Sheriff's Detective Mike Bice during her initial interview with a story about going to a doctor's appointment, then realizing that she didn't have an appointment and returning home to find her husband dead.
On a recorded interview played for the jury on Tuesday, once Bice started to pick apart her story and urge her to "shoot straight," she became silent for several minutes. Then she changed her account of events, admitting that she'd shot him, disposed of items that had blood on them and had wrapped him in garbage bags and a blanket, but she couldn't move him very much. His body ended up in the kitchen, according to the recording.
When she got to the day of the shooting, Patricia Wilkey offered added testimony as Lasley worked through the recorded interview transcript.
"When he came through the door he had been drinking," she testified from the stand Thursday. "We wound up getting into an argument ... if he's drinking, I lock him out of the safes completely. Change the combination."
She testified that her husband then became angry at being locked out of the safes and retrieved a .40-caliber Glock handgun from between the mattress of their bed and the box spring. She said that his small pistol, a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson Bodyguard talked about in previous testimony, must have been "poking" him in his pocket so he stood at some point and took it out of his pocket and laid it on top of a mini-refrigerator on Skipper Wilkey's side of the bed, where he was then reclined. Patricia Wilkey was standing at the side of the bed on that side.
"There's a few more words said. He had picked up the gun [the Glock]," she testified. "And before I could even think, I had picked up the gun and shot him."
While there had been times before when he'd pulled a gun, she testified, "he had never had the gun out that long. There was a difference in the tone of his voice. The whole argument. The look. Plus everything that he'd been saying. I was just scared to death.
"I just picked it up and shot him."
"And he tried to get up?" Lasley prompted.
"He's talking to me. He's looking me dead in the eyes," she testified. "When I come around and I grab the keys and I heard him make a noise like he was going to say something. He still had his hand on the gun ... I shot him."
Throughout the defense examination, Patricia Wilkey maintained that she was in fear of her life throughout the incident.
She testified that after the second shot she left in a vehicle, and "when I finally got to where I could think or process any type of thought, I was way past Knoxville."
She drove back afterward the same night and got to the house where "I just lost it," she testified.
She testified she used a garden wagon to move her husband's body from the bedroom to the kitchen before giving up trying to move it any further. She testified that she put the Glock back in a safe, while on the recorded statement she said that "he'd" put the gun back in the safe.
Cross examination of Patricia Wilkey and additional defense testimony took up the remainder of the court day Thursday.
Contact Ben Benton at bbenton@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6569. Follow him on Twitter @BenBenton or at www.facebook.com/benbenton1.