POCAHONTAS -- Authorities on Tuesday arrested a Pocahontas woman in the slaying of her former husband.
Kathy Elliot Hart, 54, was arrested after deputies found the body of John D. Hart, 48, about 6 a.m. Tuesday near his home on Harper Cemetery Road between Pocahontas and Maynard in Randolph County.
Prosecuting Attorney Henry Boyce of Newport said in a prepared statement Tuesday evening that charges were pending after a review of the case file.
Hart was the son of John J. Hart, a former county judge who held office in Randolph County in the mid-1990s.
State police spokesman Bill Sadler said Hart had been shot. Authorities sent the body to the state Crime Laboratory in Little Rock for an autopsy.
Kathy Hart is the sister of Carl Elliott, who was killed along with his wife, Lisa Elliott, and two children, at their Dalton home on July 29, 1998. Billy Dale Green was convicted of capital murder in the slayings and his son, Charles "Chad" Green, was convicted of first-degree murder.
Prosecutors said the slayings were carried out in retaliation for the theft of 10 marijuana plants from Green.
During the trial in that case, Kathy Hart testified that she feared for her brother's life because another relative, who was involved in the theft of the marijuana, "mysteriously disappeared."
Her statement was the basis for an appeal of Billy Green's conviction. Green's defense attorneys argued that Kathy Hart's statement was prejudicial, but Randolph County Circuit Judge Harold Erwin allowed it, admonishing the jury to disregard her comment.
The state Supreme Court later ruled that Erwin's decision to allow her statement was an abuse of the judge's discretion and in a 4-3 vote threw out Green's four capital murder convictions in 2006 and ordered him tried again. He was convicted again in 2012.
Kathy Hart was held Tuesday night in the Randolph County jail in Pocahontas. Boyce said he did not know when formal charges would be filed.
State Desk on 11/11/2015