Ex-con was on cocaine, PCP when ‘voices’ told him to kill his 79-year-old mom, Texas cops say

An ex-con with a violent past was high when he turned the knife on his 79-year-old mother over the weekend, police in Humble, Texas say.

Garry Newman Jenkins, 56, was arrested Tuesday and charged with murder after a neighbor found the body of Vertie Hamilton, Jenkins’ mom, dead in her home in the Audubon Forest neighborhood Monday, according to a news release from the Harris County Sheriff’s Office.

Neighbors grew concerned over the weekend after they had not seen Hamilton around the neighborhood for a few days. One of those neighbors made his way into the 79-year-old’s home and found her body face down just inside her front entryway with a kitchen knife still buried in her back and an unspecified number of stab wounds, the Houston Chronicle reported.

Jenkins, who was living with his mother after being paroled on an aggravated assault charge from 2005 according to court records, was nowhere to be found when his mother’s body was discovered. Authorities say Hamilton had last been seen with her son.

Police in Houston, about 20 miles south of Hamilton’s home in Humble, found Jenkins Tuesday morning at a bus stop in the area, according to KHOU. Leaving his mother’s home was a violation of his parole, and his ankle bracelet notified law enforcement that he left shortly before questions came up about his mother’s whereabouts, the Chronicle reported.

But the more sordid details of Hamilton’s death came out when Jenkins gave a jailhouse interview Wednesday. Jenkins told KTRK that he was high on cocaine Sunday morning when he was offered the dangerous psychoactive drug PCP.

After smoking two “sticks” of the drug, he began to hallucinate, and started hearing voices in his head, he told the station. Those voices told him to grab the kitchen knife and kill the woman he called “my greatest champion,” even despite all his past legal trouble.

“If it wasn’t for PCP, she’d be here,” Jenkins said in the interview. “I’m not the monster they’re painting me to be.”

KTRK later contacted his brother, A.J. Jenkins, who lives in California.

“He’s not a monster,” A.J. told the station. “That would be giving him way too much credit. He’s an idiot.”

According to Harris County court records, Garry Jenkins was convicted twice of theft and twice more of auto theft in the 1990s, before two more convictions of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, in 2001 and 2005.