A 37-year-old man who confessed to killing his mistress because she had HIV may have planned the attack, a court heard on Tuesday.
Larry Dunn stabbed Cicely Lee Bolden, 28, twice in the neck and left her to bleed to death in her southeast Oak Cliff, Dallas, apartment
Larry Dunn stabbed Cicely Lee Bolden, 28, twice in the neck and left her to bleed to death in her southeast
Oak Cliff, Dallas, apartment last September after she told him she was infected.
Dunn initially told police he stabbed Bolden with a kitchen knife moments after they had unprotected sex and Bolden revealed her illness.
However new evidence presented at trial suggests the attack may not have been spontaneous.
Dallas Observer reported Bolden had told Dunn of her diagnosis a week before he killed her.
The court heard Dunn, believing he was infected and fearing he gave his wife HIV, went to his hairdresser girlfriend’s house seeking revenge.
They had unprotected sex one last time.
Then, while Bolden lay in bed, Dunn went to the kitchen, grabbed a steak knife, got back into bed and plunged the blade into Bolden’s neck, killing her.
‘In my mind, I’m already dead,’ Dunn told police at the time. ‘She killed me, so I killed her.’
Dunn faces up to life in prison if convicted.
His attorney, however, is trying to prove he acted with ‘sudden passion’, which carries a 20-year sentence.
More than a year after the couple had sex, Dunn still hasn’t been diagnosed with HIV. His lawyers say he is still undergoing tests.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most people develop a detectable amount of HIV antibodies between two to eight weeks of exposure.
Bolden’s body, which was naked from the waist down, was found by her son, seven, and daughter, eight, in their apartment.
The children ran out of the unit crying and screaming ‘my mama, my mama’, testified neighbor Latoya Arnett, who had called 911. The children now live separately with relatives.
Dunn initially denied killing Bolden, though he admitted that the two had sex that day. He also denied knowing that Bolden was HIV positive when Dallas police Detective Brian Tabor told him.
In a second interview, Dunn admitted what he had done, saying: ‘I was enraged, man…She knew she had HIV.’
He said Bolden didn’t struggle because ‘she wasn’t very strong.’
He also revealed he burned his clothes afterwards and dumped the knife in the garbage at a waffle house. Police later recovered the weapon.
‘I wanted to make her pay,’ Dunn said in the recorded interview, according to Dallas News. ‘Killing her wasn’t on the menu. That’s just how it ended up.’
The father of Cicely’s son, Jeff Busby, said that Bolden had contracted HIV within the last couple of years.
Speaking about Dunn, he said: ‘I hope he rots in prison. She [Bolden] did not deserve this.’
Stuffed teddy bear toys and candles were left outside Bolden’s boarded-up apartment in Highland Village Drive after the grisly murder.
Read more: ‘She killed me, so I killed her’: Man stabbed his mistress to death after she told him she had HIV
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