Pasco jurors will hear tapes of murder suspect

Joshua James Engel was recorded confessing to the slayings of his aunt and grandmother.

By MOLLY MOORHEAD, Times Staff Writer
Published September 19, 2007

Defense attorney Charles Lykes Jr., left, and defendant Joshua James Engel listen to a taped interview Engel had with detectives in which he confessed to killing his aunt and grandmother. Engel is on trial for two counts of first-degree murder.
	[Brendan Fitterer | Times]

NEW PORT RICHEY -- Hours after he fled his Pasco County home where his grandmother and aunt lay dead on the bathroom floor, Joshua James Engel made a prediction about his future.

"I'm going to die in jail, Shirlene," Engel told his mother-in-law in a phone call from Georgia as detectives listened in.

Soon after, on April 11, 2004, authorities surrounded the motel where he was hiding with his wife and arrested Engel, now 30, in the murders of 46-year-old Debra Thompson, his aunt, and 68-year-old Dorothy Thompson, his grandmother.

He faces trial this week on first-degree murder charges and could spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted.

Engel later gave two more recorded confessions to detectives. Defense attorney Charles Lykes on Tuesday sought to keep them out of the trial, saying Engel had asked for a lawyer before the tape rolled.

And he questioned the detectives' tactics.

"He's coaching him virtually through the whole thing," Lykes said.

But Circuit Judge Thane Covert ruled the confessions were given voluntarily, and jurors could hear them today.

On the tapes, Engel said that on April 9, 2004, a Friday night, he bought a Xanax pill at a nightclub, then took it along with beer. He picked up his grandmother from work and went home to the Runnel Drive house he shared with the two women and his wife, Kelly, who is blind.

In the interview with detectives, Engel said he got into an argument with Debra Thompson -- over what, he couldn't remember -- that ended with him stabbing her. Then he turned on his grandmother as she tried to intervene.

"I am very sorry," Engel told the detectives. "I can't believe that I did that."

Engel thought he stabbed each woman once or twice. But Assistant State Attorney Mike Halkitis said the medical examiner found otherwise.

Debra Thompson, Halkitis said, was stabbed four times and left with a large kitchen knife stuck in her back. Dorothy Thompson had 23 stab wounds.

Covered in their blood, Engel showered, packed up his grandmother's van and fled, authorities say.

He took his wife with him, planning to leave her with her mother in North Carolina.

Shirlene Orr, of Hendersonville, N.C., testified that she received a frantic phone call from Engel on that Saturday morning while she got ready for work.

"I've done a terrible thing," Orr said Engel told her. "I just murdered two people."

Molly Moorhead can be reached at moorhead@sptimes.com or (352) 521-6521.

[Last modified September 18, 2007, 22:09:28]