DURHAM -- The woman charged with killing her ex- lover’s fiancée told police she had an abortion about a year before graduate student Denita Smith was found shot to death outside her apartment, Durham police investigators testified Monday.
Defense attorney Scott Holmes asked Judge Ronald Stephens to suppress accused murderer Shannon Elizabeth Crawley’s statements, arguing that police had continued to question his client after she had asked for an attorney.
Stephens did not rule on the request Monday.
Crawley is charged in the Jan. 4, 2007, death of Smith, 25, a popular N.C. Central University student who was a semester away from receiving her master’s degree in English.
A maintenance worker found Smith’s body at the bottom of a staircase at Campus Crossings Apartments. She had been shot in the head.
Crawley, a mother of two and a former 911 dispatcher for the city of Greensboro, told police Jan. 5, 2007, that she had intimate relationship with Stroud starting at the end of 2004, Durham investigators Shawn Pate and Delois West testified Monday.
Jury selection is scheduled to continue Tuesday.
