Linda Frickey was 73 years old when she was the victim of a brutal crime that shocked New Orleans when her arm was ripped off while being dragged behind her car in a carjacking.
Kathy Richard, Linda's sister-in-law, and Frickey's sister Jenny Griffin joined the Newell Normand show to react to the guilty verdict against 18-year-old John Honore on a second-degree murder charge.
"The verdict was what we were hoping for," Richard told Normand, adding that she was happy he wasn't able to plead down to a lesser charge of manslaughter. "John Honore is a murderer and he (Frickey's husband) wanted him to wear that hat for the rest of his life."
Griffin was glad the jury was unmoved by defense claims Honore was a 'poor little boy' who had disadvantages in life.
“He did it. OK? He did it,” defense attorney William Boggs said during the trial, adding that the only question for the jury was an 'underdeveloped, underprivileged youth' should be locked for life in Angola’s prison.
“I am going to come to you and say, ‘Let’s not throw away another life,’” Boggs told the jury.
But when prosecutors showed pictures of what had happened to Frickey -- which 'was horrific' -- the jury started looking at him 'as a monster instead of a little boy,' Richard said.
Some of the injuries that Linda had -- including blood in her lungs, four broken ribs and a detached heart valve -- were caused by him stomping her in the face and the chest, a medical examiner testified, per Richard.
Her injuries were so horrific that experts 'used the term skinned her alive,' she added.
Honore didn't act alone. His co-defendants, Briniyah Baker, 17, Lenyra Theophile, 16, and Mar'Qel Curtis, 16, were each indicted with second-degree murder along with Honore. The others pleaded guilty on Nov. 20 to attempted manslaughter and were sentenced immediately to 20 years in prison.
Honore faces a mandatory life prison term. He is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 12. His arrest record started when he was 12 years old and he was supposed to have been in jail on a different crime when Honore was murdered. "If was admitted ... he fell through the cracks," Richard said.
Richard said she promised Linda before she died that people 'would know her name and know what they did to her.'
She added that her sister-in-law's death highlights a systemic problem in the schools in New Orleans, and it's one she and Griffin are now going to devote their time to fixing. "What happened to Linda, I think it started in the failure of the school systems ... The judge told the three girls, if you were in school, this wouldn't have happened," she added.
