Rodney McIntyre was held without bond for first-degree murder in connection with the stabbing death of his teenage daughter, Ebony Franklin.
Emotions ran high in today’s arraignment as the prosecution laid out details of the girl’s death and argued that there was probable cause to detain McIntyre until a preliminary hearing, set for July 7.
The evidence included phone records and a DNA test that showed a sexual relationship between McIntyre and Franklin, who is his biological daughter. The prosecution also said that McIntyre was the last known person to have contact with Franklin before her body was found several days later—stabbed 15 times—in a Columbia Heights dumpster.
Several individuals in the courtroom became upset and left the room after the DNA evidence was mentioned.
Police Chief Cathy Lanier said Saturday that McIntyre had been a person of interest in the case from the beginning, but charging documents released today show him to have become increasingly paranoid as MPD investigated his daughter’s death. Under questioning from authorities, the explanations that he offered for evidence grew increasingly bizarre.
According to prosecutors, when confronted with evidence that McIntyre’s sperm was found in Franklin’s body during the autopsy, he initially said that she was trying to become pregnant and that he had provided her with a bottle of his semen, which she was inserting into herself with a turkey baster.
Later he said that he had had sex with her, but that the semen found in the autopsy was not his because “he knew that sperm did not stay inside of a woman’s body for more than 3 days, such that it would be impossible for his DNA to be present because their last sexual contact was on Tuesday, November 23, 2010,” charging documents said.
In charging documents presented to McIntyre today, government prosecutors relied on the autopsy, sex kit evidence and cell phone records that show Franklin and McIntyre in the same part of Columbia Heights at the same time the day she was reported missing.
Prosecutors also cite two text messages sent from Franklin’s phone after she was reported missing: one sent on Saturday, Nov. 27, asking if her mother was upset that she hadn’t come home. Another, sent to her mother the following day reads: “Remember.the.bitch.told.on.my.man.now.yoo.get.her.out.the.trash.”
The recipient of the first message said that they had never before received a text message from Franklin.
Read charging documents from the case and other coverage after the jump.
Other coverage from court today:
Read reports from NBC Washington and the Associated Press.
