A Marietta man who on Wednesday admitted that he murdered his girlfriend on August 23, 2018, while her four children were in the house, has been ordered to serve life in prison.
According to the Cobb County District Attorney's office, Christopher Gene Scarboro, 29, admitted that he began arguing with Xi-Anna Graham, 24, at her residence on Bonnie Dell Drive in Marietta. In a fit of rage, he put his hands around her neck and squeezed until she stopped breathing, then fled the scene. Shortly after that, Scarboro placed an anonymous call to police requesting a welfare check on Graham but refused to say what had occurred.
The Cobb Medical Examiner later determined Graham’s death was the result of asphyxia due to strangulation. Graham’s four minor children were in the home at the time of the murder. In an interview at SafePath Children’s Advocacy Center, one child recalled hearing banging noises earlier in the night, and then, referring to the defendant and the child’s mother, stated, “he always, he does bad things to her…and now he…killed her.”
During Wednesday’s hearing, Graham’s father told the court: “I held her in my arms and watched her take her first breath, and he took her breath away.”
Cobb Superior Court Judge Angela Z. Brown accepted Scarboro’s guilty plea to malice murder and cruelty to children in the third degree and sentenced him to life in prison.