TEXARKANA -- It took about an hour Monday evening for a Miller County jury to find a 67-year-old Texarkana woman guilty of capital murder in the 2013 shooting death of a fellow square dancer.
Virginia Ann Hyatt remained stone-faced as Circuit Judge Randy Wright handed down an automatic sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Prosecutors said Hyatt shot Patricia "Patti" Wheelington five times Dec. 3, 2013, as Wheelington sat sipping coffee on the front porch of her South Valley Road home. They said Hyatt blamed Wheelington for the end of her 40-year marriage to James Hyatt. Both women were members of the Guys and Dolls Square Dancing Club in Texarkana.
"The prosecutor's office is here to seek justice for those who have been wronged, especially those without a voice, like Patti Wheelington," Prosecuting Attorney Stephanie Black of Texarkana said.
During five days of testimony, witnesses described Virginia Hyatt as intensely jealous of other women and possessive of her husband. James Hyatt told the jury that he and his wife had not been intimate in 10 years, that the couple slept in separate bedrooms and that he locked his door at night.
"Virginia was a very difficult person to live with. ... She's right where she needs to be [in jail]," James Hyatt testified Monday morning. "She needs to be there for the rest of her life for what she's done."
James Hyatt admitted earlier during the trial that he and Wheelington became romantic in late 2009.
"She trusted me; she shouldn't have," James Hyatt said Monday morning. "I got her killed."
James Hyatt said he and his family began to fear for his life when Virginia Hyatt told his sisters she thought he was suicidal, which led them to suspect that Virginia Hyatt was plotting to kill him and make his death appear self-inflicted. On Nov. 29, 2013, James Hyatt fled Texarkana for Florida with his sister. He said he warned Wheelington that he feared for her safety as well.
Chief Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Chuck Black told jurors that Virginia Hyatt drove to Wheelington's home at about 8 a.m. Dec. 2, 2013, and confronted her. Hyatt confronted Wheelington again at a square dance lesson later the same day, Black added.
The next morning, Wheelington was sitting in a swivel chair on her front porch talking on the phone with her friend, Ken Caldwell. Caldwell, who died shortly after the murder, had told investigators that Wheelington had told him Virginia Hyatt was coming up her driveway before ending the conversation.
Prosecutors theorized that Wheelington was sitting in the chair when Virginia Hyatt came within 3 feet of her and fired the first of five shots from a .38-caliber pistol. Fabric from Wheelington's robe was lodged in the chair's back, and the soot and gunpowder of a bullet marked Wheelington's face.
As Wheelington stood up and attempted to reach an exterior door and the safety of her home, she was shot four more times, prosecutors said. The bullets that ripped through Whellington's lungs and heart caused her to collapse in front of the door.
Friends Barbara Ricketts and Phyllis Nabors discovered Wheelington's body on the porch later that day, and investigators quickly identified Virginia Hyatt as the lone suspect in Wheelington's murder.
State Desk on 02/10/2016