Officials: Mom Coaxed Son To Kill DadWoman Charged With First-Degree Murder
Published On: Oct 28 2011 04:26:10 PM EDT Updated On: Mar 16 2011 09:01:16
Throughout Darryl Kenney's murder trial last October, his defense attorney Randy Moore painted a picture of a loving son expertly manipulated by his mother into killing his father.
A jury of 12 didn't buy it. They convicted the 24-year-old of first-degree murder.
Now, the alleged architect of the patricide is being charged.
Homicide agents with the Brevard County Sheriff's Office arrested Sharon Myers [Sharon Kenney is remarried] on Tuesday after a grand jury indicted her on charges of first-degree premeditated murder and armed burglary.
Myers, 47, of Viera, works at a Merritt Island credit union and was arrested without incident about 4:30 p.m.
"The investigators in this case have pieced together Sharon Myers' conspiracy from the moment her previous husband's body was discovered," Cmdr. Doug Waller told Local 6 News partner Florida Today. "The evidence demonstrated how she methodically manipulated her child as he sat in prison awaiting release. It was simply a matter of time until all of the pieces fell into place to enable an arrest."
Defense attorney Randy Moore with the public defender's office urged jurors to use common sense during Darryl Kenney's murder trial, saying it was vital to know what was going on in Kenney's mind when he gunned down his father with a friend in 2008.
Moore said it should have been Kenney's mother on trial. Moore said Myers wrote hundreds of letters to her son while he was in prison, detailing physical abuse against her and an attempted sexual molestation of his sister -- allegations Moore said were not true.
"Someone is feeding this information to Darryl while he is in prison," Moore said during closing arguments in October. "We have a young man that has come to the conclusion that this man was abusing his mother and tried to rape his sister. What was going through his mind when these acts were committed? Don't you know what was going on in his head?"
Darryl Kenney shot and killed his father, Gary Kenney, at his Merritt Island home on Venetian Way in June 2008, only four days after the son's release from prison. He had served time for grand theft, burglary and aggravated battery. Kenney put seven bullets into his father's back as he tried to walk away from their confrontation.
During Darryl Kenney's trial, it was revealed that he had written a letter to a sheriff's agent complaining about the abuse his mother and sister were suffering and that the defendant had a passion to "protect his mother and sister."
Weeks after his conviction, Darryl Kenney contacted the Sheriff's Office about his mother's involvement.
According to excerpts of the letters obtained from the Sheriff's Office, Myers complained to her son constantly about her abusive husband.
"Darryl, I just want to tell you that I have had some really bad thoughts lately and even thought about acting on them," she wrote in one letter. "Do you know anyone who could help me with Gary? I hope so."
In other letters, she wrote:
"I want my problem to go away, but I do not want you to spend more time in."
"What I really want is for Gary to go away forever."
"Can you contact the guy you said gets out in a month? Son, I am so tired of it. I am about ready to do it myself and not sure how though.
According to the case report, Darryl Kenney then told investigators his mother rented a hotel room for him on Merritt Island for a few days and discussed how to get rid of the body. She told him where he could find his father's guns at his grandfather's house. She also loaned her son his father's truck so he could pick up accomplice Rubin Nero. After the murder, Darryl Kenney told investigators he met his mother at Merritt Square Mall to tell her the nefarious deed had been carried out.
She told him to dispose of the body. When he went back to the house, he was met by sheriff's deputies investigating the guns stolen from the grandfather's house.
Investigators said they corroborated Darryl Kenney's claims, including one that said his mother used a phone given to her by the Department of Children and Families to orchestrate the murder. The phone had been given to her even though there were no findings that supported her claims of physical and sexual abuse.
Nero, who had met Darryl Kenney while in prison, was convicted of first-degree murder late last year. Prosecutors said Nero stabbed and slashed Gary Kenney.
