A 38-year-old Little Rock man who strangled his wife two days before Thanksgiving accepted a 40-year prison sentence on Monday for killing the mother of three.
Derrick Jermaine "Cookie Monster" Mason pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, reduced from capital murder, in exchange for the prison term imposed by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Leon Johnson.
Senior deputy prosecutor Marianne Satterfield told the judge that Mason admitted to police that he had killed 34-year-old Jessica Lynn Berliew. The couple had been married about 14 months.
Mason was on probation at the time for choking Berliew, whose children are from a previous relationship, more than five years earlier, court records show.
He will have to serve at least 28 years in prison before he can qualify for parole.
According to an arrest report, Mason slapped, beat and choked Berliew while threatening to kill her during an argument in May 2010. She told police he also raped her and forced her to perform oral sex.
He was charged with rape, third-degree domestic battering, aggravated assault and terroristic threatening. He pleaded guilty to the domestic battering charge in December 2010 in exchange for five years' probation and a $1,000 fine. Prosecutors dropped the other charges.
The battering charge was a felony because Mason had a prior misdemeanor domestic-battering conviction, court records show. Details of that crime were not available.
As part of his sentence in the 2010 case, Mason had been court-ordered to stay away from Berliew and complete a domestic-violence program.
He was arrested in November 2013 on West 27th Street on misdemeanor counts of carrying a weapon and public intoxication, but authorities did not move to revoke his probation until he killed Berliew, court records show.
Court files show that Mason's uncle called police to the West 36th Street home of Mason's mother on the morning of Nov. 24, 2015, so his nephew could surrender to officers.
Donnie Mason told police that Derrick Mason had gone to the residence and said he wanted to surrender to police because he had killed his wife, but had not said much more than that, according to court filings.
Derrick Mason told the arresting officers that he had choked Berliew and that she did not wake up. He directed them to the couple's Bishop Street home, where Mason said he left her.
Police found Berliew's body, with bruising around her throat and jaw, covered with a blanket on a bed in a back bedroom of the home, reports stated.
Mason told detectives that his wife got home from work and was upset that he had not cleaned the house or found a job. He, in turn, was upset that she was a dancer at the Paper Moon strip club and did not like when she talked to her customers outside work, he said.
Their argument turned violent, he said.
"I just snapped. We got to tussling in the room. The last thing I remember is we were tussling in the bedroom," he told a doctor in an interview for a mental examination. "The last thing I remember is I had my hands on her neck, and then I blacked out."
Mason said he woke up later with her dead body in bed next to him.
Mason said he'd "wigged out" during the couple's argument and that when he woke up in bed with her body, he knew he'd killed Berliew but did not remember what had happened.
"I was going to get up and apologize to her. When I touched her, she was stiff," he told the doctor. "I put my hand on her stomach and she was hard and cold. So I grabbed her and started talking to her and saying I was sorry."
Berliew's landlord, Ryan Williams, told police that he had rented to Berliew for years and that he knew the woman to have an off-and-on relationship with Mason.
The couple fought frequently, Williams said, and Mason seemed to have a bad temper.
Williams said Berliew lived alone in the residence and had let Mason move in with her when their relationship was good.
She would kick Mason out frequently, only to let him return to the house, Williams told police.
Williams said he'd last seen Berliew about 10:30 p.m. the night before her body was found. He said he saw Mason the next morning about nine hours later, walking away from the house.
Mason's sister, Cristai Mason, told detectives that he had called her about that same time, 8 a.m., telling her that he had "messed up" and his wife was dead.
Derrick Mason told her he had flipped out and killed the woman, but wanted to turn himself in.
Mason's mother told detectives that her son had texted her about 3 a.m. that he had "messed up," and that he told her in a 9 a.m. phone call that he had strangled his wife during a fight, court filings show.
Mason has been jailed since his arrest.
In January, he and another inmate, Jerry Laron McCoy, 47, were arrested for fighting in jail. Both men were convicted of misdemeanor battery.
Metro on 08/02/2016