TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Defense Cites Voices In Opening Of Decapitation Trial

ADVERTISEMENT

By MARK DOUGLAS

News Channel 8

Published: September 26, 2008

ST. PETERSBURG - Defense attorneys say Dennis George Roache was taking orders from imagined voices when he decapitated his ex-girlfriend's lover six years ago in St. Petersburg.

Prosecutors call it an act of calculated vengeance.

In opening statements Thursday at Roache's murder trial, Pinellas prosecutor Richard Ripplinger conceded Roache was mentally unstable when he broke in to the home of Monique Pennywell, found her in bed with her 18-year-old lover, Gregory Shannon, and hacked him to death with a 2-foot-long machete.

"He is schizophrenic. He has a mental illness that will not be disputed in this case," Ripplinger told the jury. But the prosecutor said Roache, 40, acted out of jealousy in the Feb. 4, 2002, attack.

"He kills the very man he had warned to stay away from the woman the man was in bed with," Ripplinger said.

Jurors in the case heard a different scenario from Pinellas Assistant Public Defender Violet Assaid, who specializes in the defense of mentally ill defendants.

"He was listening to rock 'n' roll oldies on U92 radio. The music stopped and a man's voice told Dennis this message is pertaining to you," Assaid said in her opening statement.

Assaid said the imagined voice eventually led Roache to strike Shannon 52 times with the machete and decapitate him.

"A voice told Dennis to finish cutting off the head, so he did," Assaid said.

Pennywell had escaped the bedroom, sought refuge in another room, and was on the phone with 911 operators while the attack was under way. She emerged to discover the mutilated body of her boyfriend at the foot of her bed.

Neighbor Sarah Jackson reported watching Roache leave the house with a machete in one hand and Shannon's head in the other. She said he placed it on the windshield of a Cutlass Oldsmobile in the driveway, then positioned a vanity mirror in front of the car so "he could see himself," Jackson said in testimony.

Assaid is trying to convince the jury his client thought killing Shannon was the only way to stop the sexual abuse of five children he helped raise with Pennywell, children in protective custody at the time of the killing because the state was investigating abuse charges.

"No one would choose to live in the world that Dennis Roache lives in," Assaid told the jury. "It's dark and it's full of danger and conspiracies and violence."

Ripplinger told the jury there is a much simpler explanation. He said Roache was jealous of two other men who fathered four of Pennywell's five children. At the time of the killing, she was pregnant with Shannon's child.

"He was jealous and didn't want them around," Ripplinger said.

Editor's note: Tessara Jackson's name was misspelled in earlier versions of this story.

Reporter Mark Douglas can be reached at (813) 536-9603 or mdouglas@wfla.com.

Share this:

MORE FROM THIS CHANNEL

• Bolts finish road trip on positive note

• Bus stop where girl died meets safety rules

• Auto sales booming in rural China

• Boeing 787 gets second test flight Tuesday

TOPICS IN THIS ARTICLE

assistant public defender • vanity mirror • 911 operators • roll oldies • ill defendants • pennywell • ripplinger • dennis george • roache • sarah jackson • defense attorneys • opening statements • machete • cutlass • murder trial • sexu • jurors • mental illness • windshield • prosecutor

Loading Comments...

Email Print