As death penalty decision looms, Tarrant trial opens in strangulation of girlfriend, child

Inside the two-story apartment building constructed of tan and black bricks and stucco exterior walls, O’Tishae Womack’s body was on her kitchen floor.

A white Albertsons grocery bag covered her head. A black and white floral comforter was on top of her legs.

Upstairs on a bed in the east Fort Worth apartment lay her daughter, Ka’Myria, covered by a blanket. The 10-year-old wore shorts and a T-shirt. She looked as though she was asleep.

But Ka’Myria, too, was gone. The little girl’s body was cold.

Both were strangled when pressure was applied to their necks until they stopped breathing, according to the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office account.

A forensic pathologist could not determine whether an object or a body part, such as a hand, caused the pressure, although previously, O’Tishae Womack told police officers that Paige Terrell Lawyer, her 38-year-old boyfriend, had wrapped his hands around her neck.

Prosecutors allege that Lawyer was the killer. Before the double homicide on April 6, 2018, in the 200 block of Shady Lane Drive, Lawyer had a history of arrests in domestic violence assault cases in which Womack was the victim.

Putting his hands around Womack’s neck was Lawyer’s modus operandi, his standard method for injuring his girlfriend, according to the district attorney’s office.

Lawyer was motivated to kill Womack in part by an attempt to silence her, the state alleges. Lawyer suggested to his nephew that he feared Womack would participate in the district attorney’s office prosecution of the previous domestic violence assault cases, the relative, Cortez Frazier, testified. The cases were underpinned by false accusations, Lawyer suggested.

The defendant had a probation revocation hearing scheduled on April 13, 2018, seven days after the bodies were found.

He did not want to be sent to prison.

“So he killed her,” prosecutor Dale Smith told the jury in his opening statement in the capital murder trial that began on Monday in Criminal District Court No. 1 in Tarrant County.

The district attorney’s office is seeking the death penalty. Jurors are first hearing evidence and argument to consider whether Lawyer is guilty or not guilty before moving, if the panel convicts him, to a phase to determine punishment.

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Lawyer was indicted in May 2018, and the decision to seek the death penalty in the case was made when District Attorney Phil Sorrells’ predecessor, Sharen Wilson, held the office.

The last time a Tarrant County jury sent a defendant to Death Row was in November 2019 when it convicted Hector Acosta of capital murder. The Mexican drug cartel hit man was found guilty of killing two people in Arlington in 2017, beheading one of the victims, and mutilating their bodies with a machete and a two-by-four.

Tarrant County Assistant District Attorney Lloyd Whelchel is, with Smith, prosecuting Lawyer.

The jury has heard evidence showing that Lawyer’s bloody fingerprint was found on a mop near O’Tishae Womack’s body and the panel is expected to hear that the defendant’s DNA was found under her fingernails.

Defense attorney Steve Gordon forecast in his opening statement that the evidence would be insufficient to convict Lawyer of capital murder.

He encouraged the jury to pay close attention and dispassionately dissect the evidence.

With Gordon, defense attorneys Brian Poe and William Biggs were appointed to represent Lawyer.

The jury on Tuesday heard testimony of crime scene evidence collection efforts and the accounts of four Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office employees.

The jury also learned of a drunken kitchen confession in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, that Womack’s uncle, Mark McGee, testified the defendant offered.

In the hours after the homicides, Lawyer told his sister that he needed to get out of town but did not refer to the killings. She drove him to McGee’s house.

Over booze, Lawyer told McGee that he had killed his girlfriend and a child by choking them and had put a bag over the adult victim’s head to be certain that she was dead, McGee testified.

Lawyer suggested that he considered dismembering the bodies, McGee testified.

“Did he say something about a chainsaw?” prosecutor Smith asked.

“He was gonna cut ‘em up but it would make too much noise,” McGee testified.

McGee called the U.S. Marshals Service, and law enforcement officers assigned to a fugitive task force arrested Lawyer after he climbed out of a back window at McGee’s house.

After reviewing reports and photos prepared by others, Dr. Tasha Zemrus, the chief deputy medical examiner in Tarrant County, concluded that both deaths were homicides caused by strangulation. Blunt force trauma was a secondary cause in O’Tishae Womack’s death. She was 30 years old. Zemrus did not perform the autopsies.

Worried about O’Tishae Womack because she did not arrive for their morning walk, Lashundra Womack went to her sister’s apartment and knocked on a door.

Imitating the attempts to draw a response from someone inside, prosecutor Smith rapped his knuckles on the jury box wall during his opening statement.

Eventually, with a key obtained from their mother, Lashundra Womack entered the apartment and found the bodies of her sister and niece.

Also living in the Shady Lane Drive apartment were Womack’s twin 4-year-old sons. On the day the bodies were found, Lawyer dropped the boys off at their elementary school, retired Fort Worth Police Department Homicide Unit Detective Ernie Pate testified.

Judge Elizabeth Beach is presiding at the trial. The state’s case is scheduled to resume on Wednesday morning.