A 43-year-old murderer on parole who killed a man in his Little Rock home last year has been sentenced to five years in prison for manslaughter.
Sentencing papers filed Thursday show Keith L. Farr Jr. pleaded guilty to manslaughter and being a felon in possession of a firearm for the March 2020 slaying of Jeremy Jamar Bonds, 31, of Little Rock during an encounter at Farr's South Gaines Street home.
Under the conditions of Farr's plea agreement, negotiated by deputy prosecutor Jayme Butts-Hall and public defender Colleen Barnhill, the original charge, first-degree murder, was reduced to manslaughter and charges of aggravated robbery and theft involving accusations against Farr by Bonds' friend, Rikki Mara Ratliff, 35, of Sherwood, were dropped.
According to arrest affidavits and police reports, Ratliff flagged down a passing patrol car at the intersection of West 30th and South Gaines streets on the morning of March 27, 2020, and told officers she had been robbed the night before by a man she knew as KeKe.
Ratliff directed officers to Farr's home at 2924 S. Gaines, where Farr's aunt came out of the house and told police there was a man she did not know who needed medical attention on the second floor. Officers went inside and found Bonds dead next to a pit bull terrier puppy. Bonds was shirtless and wearing only part of a sock, with his pants pulled almost all of the way off.
In a subsequent interview, Ratliff told investigators that her boyfriend had been arrested the day before and that she and KeKe had gathered up all of the man's things to keep safe for him and put them into her white Ford Expedition, along with her puppy. Ratliff said she got suspicious of KeKe, however, when he asked her to take him to her home instead of dropping him off at his own place.
Close to KeKe's home, he reached into a bag of dog food among the items in the vehicle and pulled out a pistol, Ratliff said. KeKe told her that her boyfriend wanted him to keep his things and not to let her leave his sight until the man had called him, she told police.
KeKe took over the SUV at gunpoint and drove them to his house, where he got someone to take her away, Ratliff said. That person dropped her off and she ended up spending the night at a South University Street hotel.
Ratliff told police that on March 27 she met up with Bonds, a friend of her boyfriend, to take her back to KeKe's house to try and get her things back. Ratliff said she hoped Bonds could talk KeKe into returning her things. She told police her SUV was not at the residence when they arrived. She said a woman let them into the house and directed them upstairs to KeKe.
She said when they found KeKe, he "jumped up and yelled" that he was not giving her vehicle back to her then went and got a gun, the same weapon he'd had the day before. She said she heard the sound of the pistol being cocked and ran downstairs as she heard a struggle behind her and Bonds saying, "chill out."
She said she heard a loud bang just as she got to the bottom of the stairs as if someone had fallen upstairs, according to an arrest affidavit.
Ratliff said she ran outside, describing how she heard two or three gunshots inside the house as she fled until she saw a patrol car passing and flagged down police.
A search of the residence by detectives turned up the wallet of Ratliff's boyfriend and two guns, one of them next to Bond's body and matching the description of the weapon Ratliff had seen KeKe with. A check showed the weapon had been purchased by Farr's girlfriend.
Farr's aunt, Darlene Evans, told police that a man and woman had showed up at the home, claiming that her nephew had pulled a gun on the woman. Evans said the pair came inside without being invited then walked upstairs. Evans said a few minutes later, the woman ran out of the house and she could hear fighting noises upstairs, followed by three gunshots. She said her nephew left, telling her the other man had a gun and that she needed to call police, according to the affidavit.
Wearing clothes with apparent blood on them, Farr surrendered to police later in the day, about five hours after Bonds' body was found. Farr told detectives that Ratliff's boyfriend had asked him to keep his things and that he and Ratliff had argued about that but said that he'd never had a gun. He said that Ratliff had let him unload the boyfriend's possessions.
Pressed by detectives, Farr said he had pulled a gun on Ratliff like she said and taken her SUV, but said he had found the pistol in the dog-food bag. The gun was not the same one found by Bonds' body, Farr told police.
Farr said the fatal encounter began when Ratliff and Bonds, a man Farr had never seen before, showed up, demanding Ratliff's SUV back. Farr said Bonds had a gun in his waistband and started to pull it out when Farr grabbed the gun and they fought over the weapon. Ratliff was hitting him in the head during the fight, Farr said, describing how his father tried to help him, the affidavit states.
Farr said the gun went off a couple of times, and that Bonds was hit in the leg. Farr said he pulled the weapon away from Bonds and fired another shot but didn't think he'd struck Bonds, whose pants had come off during the struggle.
Farr said he dropped the gun and went looking for Ratliff to fight her for bringing Bonds to his home but couldn't find her.
Farr's father, 68-year-old Keith Farr Sr., told police that he'd heard arguing that morning and saw Farr quarrelling with a man who had visited the house before who was holding a pistol by his side. He said the men started fighting and the gun had gone off a couple of times, telling detectives that he'd left the house once the shooting started. The elder Farr said that when he left his son was still in the house and that the other man was fully clothed while laying on the floor.
Detectives also learned that Ratliff had not formally purchased the SUV, with the owner telling investigators she was supposed to be making payments to him toward purchasing the vehicle. The vehicle was found about three weeks later at 2 High Drive, a residence police described as "associated" with Farr's brother Kevin Farr, 42.
[RELATED: Click here for interactive map + full coverage of crime in Little Rock » arkansasonline.com/lrcrime/]
Court records show that since Bonds was killed, Ratliff has been arrested three times on felony drug-trafficking charges resulting in her federal indictment on gun-possession and methamphetamine-trafficking charges.
Faulkner County authorities on Monday issued an arrest warrant for Ratliff after she missed a court appearance that day on drug charges.
Keith Farr Jr. was convicted of second-degree murder, reduced by a jury from first-degree murder, for killing a partially paralyzed man, 43-year-old James Edward Ford, at age 14 in May 1993. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison at his April 1994 trial, court records show.
In June 2005, Farr was sentenced to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to drug-trafficking and robbery charges. He was subsequently approved for parole in July 2015.