An Arkansas man stabbed his wife to death because she changed the TV channel from a football game he was watching while he went outside to smoke.
Investigators say Tony Thomas, 58, of Carlisle, admitted to killing his wife, Elke, during an argument after she switched the TV channel in November. After she was dead, he then called emergency services to bring a ‘meat wagon’. He has been in jail since the incident and has now been charged with capital murder.
"He went outside to smoke and upon returning, he discovered that Elke had changed the channel. He asked about the score and she began yelling at him and got in his face," Lonoke County Sheriff’s Detective Anthony Counts wrote in an affidavit.
Thomas said he blacked out and came to while standing over the woman with a knife in his hands, according to the affidavit. Court records show his bond is set at $US1 million.
Deputies were already responding to the scene because a woman who had been at the home flagged down someone passing by to report the stabbing. A man who identified himself as “Tony” later called the sheriff’s office and “asked the dispatcher for a ‘meat wagon and police’ because he’d killed his wife,” Counts wrote.
The affidavit says the stabbing occurred on November 19 in the home’s living room, where blood was found on the floor, the walls, a table and the TV. Counts wrote that it appeared the woman’s body was dragged through the dining room to the backyard, where it was found beneath a blanket and a tarp.
