Murder nets 40-year term for man, 24

He pleads guilty in death of woman in El Dorado

— A Russellville man pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in Union County Circuit Court on Monday in the death of an El Dorado woman.

Jeremy Wade Perdue, 24, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and one count of aggravated residential burglary in the August 2010 death of Fran Farley, 62, of El Dorado. Perdue was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the murder charge and 20 years in prison on the residential burglary charge, the sentences will run concurrently.

He pleaded guilty to the charges on the morning his trial was to start.

Perdue is already serving a 25-year sentence for a rape charge and 20 years for second-degree sexual assault involving a girl younger than 14 in a September conviction in Pope County. The sentence from the plea agreement Monday will run at the same time as the previous conviction.

Because of the two prior felony convictions, Perdue will be required to serve the full 40-year sentence, Prosecuting Attorney Robin Carroll of El Dorado said.

As part of the plea agreement, the charges were lowered to first-degree murder from capital murder, which carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole or the death penalty.

Carroll said his office got in touch with a a member of Farley’s family Friday night.

The person “was satisfied with the arrangement and by the finality of it because it means there won’t be an appeal and a long process,” Carroll said.

Defense attorney Katherine Streett, who represented Perdue, declined to comment on the plea agreement after the hearing.

As part of the agreement, Perdue had to provide some details of the event in a statement to the court Monday.

Farley was a relative of the girl Perdue was convicted in September of raping.

In the statement, read by his attorneys and then verbally sworn to by Perdue, he said he had driven to Farley’s home on the night of the murder, Aug. 30, 2010, to speak to the mother of the girl he was then accused of raping to ask that she drop the charges.

The mother had gone to Russellville earlier that day to speak to prosecutors about the case. According to court records and the statement, Farley came home after Perdue had entered the home. They began to argue and during the argument he shot her.

“I did not go to the Farley house with the intention of hurting anyone,” he said in his statement Monday morning.

According to the incident report from the El Dorado Police Department, the child’s mother called a neighbor when she couldn’t get in touch with Farley by phone on Aug. 31, 2010, and asked the neighbor to check on her. The neighbor knocked on the door and didn’t get a response, so she used a spare key to get in.

The neighbor found Farley sitting on the couch with three bullet wounds, one in her left arm, one in her right arm and one in her forehead. The neighbor called the Police Department, which reported that the back door had been kicked in. Part of the frame was across the room and insulation had been torn from the adjacent wall.

In the affidavit of probable cause filed against Perdue, police cited several interviews with Perdue in which his story about where he was that evening changed. They also cited witness statements that they had seen a car matching the description of the car Perdue had borrowed from his brother in Farley’s neighborhood that night, including descriptions of damage to the car’s body.

They also cited Perdue had purchased a .45 caliber handgun from a pawnshop a few days earlier and the car returned to Perdue’s brother had a box of .45-caliber bullets left inside when he returned it.

Perdue had also tried to convince several co-workers to drive with him to El Dorado a few days before the shooting, and a plan was devised for Perdue to run if the car was pulled over, according to the affidavit.

Information for this article was contributed by Sara Mitchell of the El Dorado News-Times.

Arkansas, Pages 7 on 10/25/2011

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