Trio of grisly crimes darken U.S. holiday season

[January 16, 2018]  (Reuters) - In the Christmas week, there were reports of a man accused of murdering his girlfriend with a samurai sword in Texas, an Ohio woman indicted for killing her husband and hiding his body parts in their house, and a Florida man arrested for trying to electrocute his wife by rigging a booby trap to a door.

The sword that Kenneth Lockings Jr. used to kill his girlfriend was a gift received at Thanksgiving, the Houston Chronicle reported. Lockings, 35, faces a murder charge and was jailed without bond on Friday, public records showed.

He nearly decapitated his girlfriend with a samurai-style sword, the Chronicle reported. State prosecutors could not immediately be reached and court records did not indicate whether he had an attorney.

In Florida, a husband's warning to his pregnant wife not to let their daughter near the front door to their home in Palm Coast may have saved mom and daughter from harm, authorities said.

Michael Wilson, 32, had disappeared for a few days during Christmas while on a family trip in Tennessee, raising his wife's suspicions, according to an arrest warrant filed in Florida.

A law enforcement officer found the door had been rigged with an electrical booby-trap, causing a large spark when he kicked it in. An electrician told investigators with the Flagler County Sheriff's Office the electrical circuit would have likely killed anyone touching the door knob and lock.

Wilson was arrested in Tennessee and remained at a local detention center on Friday. He faces charges in both states including attempted aggravated battery on a pregnant person.

There was no record of attorney representation for Wilson on arrest documents in Florida or jail records in Tennessee.

Kenneth Wayne Lockings, charged with murder, appears in this photo obtained by Reuters December 29, 2017, after he turned himself in to officers at the Houston, Texas, U.S. police on December 28, 2017. City of Houston/Handout via REUTERS

A grand jury in Ohio, meanwhile, met the week after Christmas to indict a woman accused of killing her husband and cutting him up with hand tools.

Marcia Eubank, 49, was indicted on charges including murder and corpse abuse in the June killing of her husband of 25 years. One of the couple's sons discovered a container holding his body in his parents' home, the Akron Beacon Journal reported.

Her attorney, Brian Pierce, said she had been abused by her husband and would plead not guilty. She was jailed on Friday with bond set at $1 million.

(Reporting by Bernie Woodall in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and Chris Kenning in Chicago. Additional reporting and writing by Letitia Stein; Editing by Susan Thomas)

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