Fort Worth man gets 60 years for murder. He stabbed his mother more than 50 times.
A Tarrant County jury sentenced a man to 60 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to fatally stabbing his mother.
Paul Robert LaBar, 29, suffered from schizophrenia, according to his father, who was 61 when the killing took place in September 2016.
Authorities said LaBar stabbed his mother more than 50 times.
In an interview with homicide detectives, LaBar confessed to hitting his mother in the back of the head with a metal object, then stabbing her repeatedly when she didn’t immediately die.
In closing arguments of the trial Wednesday before the jury reached its verdict on the sentence, Tarrant County prosecutor Kacey Fickes said LaBar was not fit to be released into the public and should remain in prison for the rest of his life.
“If he can do this to his own family, is anyone ever safe with him out in society?” Fickes asked.
Prosecutors argued later that LaBar could not be trusted to take his medicine and questioned whether his medicine would work to quell his anger issues. It was the jury’s duty to punish this murderer and protect society from a man who presents a future danger to society, according to prosecutors.
LaBar’s defense attorney told the jury that it is obvious that his client suffers from mental illness issues. To put LaBar in prison for the remainder of his life would foreclose the possibility that he might someday regain mental stability, according to his attorney, Jerry Wood.
LaBar’s father, Paul Raymond LaBar, told police that he was away from home when got a call from his wife telling him to come home because she’d been injured.
Then the line went dead.
When the father called back, his then-26-year-old son, Paul Robert LaBar, answered. He asked his son to put his mother back on the line, but the son told him he didn’t want his father to speak with her.
Paul Raymond LaBar would later tell police that he could hear his wife, Lauren LaBar, pleading for help before the line went dead again.
Before losing consciousness, a fatally injured Lauren LaBar was able to tell him that their son had continued to stab her after the last phone call.
On Dec. 12, 2016, a psychiatric report declared that LaBar was incompetent to stand trial, meaning that he lacked sufficient ability to aid in his defense and an understanding of the charges he was facing.
LaBar was sent to a maximum security state mental health facility where he received treatment. On April 2, 2018, LaBar’s psychiatric report indicated that he was now competent to stand trial, according to court documents.
This story includes information from Star-Telegram archives.
