She fled to Louisiana after her Arlington boyfriend was found dead. She’s back in Texas.
An Arlington murder suspect captured in January 2020 in Louisiana has been returned to Tarrant County to face charges in the killing of her boyfriend.
Leah Noelle Franklin was booked into the Fort Worth Jail on Sunday after being extradited from Shreveport, Louisiana, where she was arrested in January 2020.
Franklin is charged with murder in the stabbing death of her boyfriend, Antonio Merle, 30, on Jan. 11, 2020, in the 5700 block of Prescott Drive in Arlington, according to Arlington police and the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office.
When officers interviewed her at their Arlington house after the fatal stabbing, Franklin said the couple was leaving a nightclub when someone “poked” Merle, according to an arrest warrant affidavit filed in the case. She told more than one version of the story, saying both that she was present when Merle was cut and that she was not, the affidavit states.
Another person in the house told an Arlington police detective that Franklin and Merle had been together there since 9:30 p.m. on Jan. 11, when they were yelling.
Police found in a kitchen garbage can a small knife with an orange handle, according to the affidavit.
She later fled to Louisiana.
In July 2019 in Fort Worth, Franklin is accused of striking Merle with a metal broom or a piece of wood and using or exhibiting a knife, a Tarrant County grand jury determined. Franklin was indicted on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
Franklin was in the Tarrant County Jail in Fort Worth on Tuesday on $12,000 bond for the aggravated assault with a deadly weapon charge in the Fort Worth case. Bond has not been set on the Arlington murder charge, according to jail records.
This report contains information from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram archives.
