Robert Erik Denney repeatedly denied Tuesday that he killed his neighbor in her Jacksonville Beach apartment seven years ago, testifying in his own defense that he never even knew who she was.
"I didn't kill Corey Parker," Denney told jurors in a soft monotone. "I haven't committed a murder."
But Denney also couldn't explain how his DNA got in her apartment. And prosecutors questioned him about calls he made to his family concerned about a Zippo lighter his former girlfriend said was his. It was found near Parker's body.
"'We have to beat the lighter thing,'" he told his sister, according to a jail phone transcript quoted by Assistant State Attorney Angela Corey.
Denney is on trial for first-degree murder and faces life in prison if convicted as charged. He was 17 when Parker, a 25-year-old student and waitress at popular Ragtime Tavern in Atlantic Beach, was stabbed 101 times on Thanksgiving morning 1998.
Denney's apartment at Fourth Street and 15th Avenue North overlooked Parker's and was about 35 feet away. But he testified he paid no attention to her building, separated from his by a chain-link fence and trees. He flatly denied knowing who Parker was and contradicted testimony by his former boss at Barbecue LTD restaurant that Denney told him he fantasized about a young woman in Parker's building.
When she was killed, Denney said, he noticed the police activity and thought there had been a drug bust. Later, he said, "It was kind of spooky that someone had been murdered in our neighborhood."
Tiffany Zienta, who said she was with victim Corey Parker the night before she died, breaks down on the witness stand Tuesday as she tells about learning her friend had been killed. BRUCE LIPSKY/The Times-Union
Denney never raised his voice or appeared agitated, even during Corey's cross examination. She began by asking him to draw a picture of his Zippo lighter so she could allow the jury to compare it to the one found in Parker's apartment. He said he had a lighter with a Celtic cross, not the National Air Traffic Controllers Association lighter found at the crime scene. But Corey pointed out Zippo didn't make the Celtic cross lighter until 2004, years after the slaying.
"That's your lighter that was found ... next to her dead, bloody body," Corey said.
"No, ma'am," he replied.
Denney told her he didn't know how his blood and hair got into the apartment, saying only "it's a possibility" a neighborhood cat could have carried it in or that he could have sneezed hard enough for DNA particles to enter her apartment through an open window.
Denney's public defenders also presented testimony from a former suspect in the case who was with Parker the night before she died and told conflicting stories to police and others in the days after the slaying. Tiffany Zienta testified that she wasn't thinking clearly after learning her friend had been killed.
"I was very upset and very distraught and very much in shock and fairly hung over," she said.
The two had met at The Ritz in Jacksonville Beach for a night of drinking and dancing the night before Thanksgiving, Zienta said. There, Zienta said, Parker had a confrontation with an acquaintance, Scott Purcell, who had come on to her. Zienta said Parker kicked Purcell, but he denied any confrontation during his testimony.
Parker and Zienta left the bar about the same time, Parker to go home and Zienta to the home of a male friend in Sawgrass. Zienta said she had planned to spend the night with Parker and called her on her cell phone. But phone records don't show that call, Assistant Public Defender Patrick McGuinness pointed out.
Zienta said she left Sawgrass between 4 and 5 a.m. and drove to Parker's apartment. She said she knocked on the door, but there was no answer so she went home. Later she said she felt guilty about not being with Parker, thinking she might have prevented her death.
She also told friends Parker had left a key for her hidden outside but later realized she was mistaken, she testified.
Zienta told jurors how she was questioned several times by police, who obtained a search warrant for her hair and saliva samples and traveled to New Orleans to question her. The FBI later said her hair was inconsistent with those found at the scene, said Assistant State Attorney Melissa Nelson.
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