Just two weeks before his trial, a 43-year-old Kent man pleaded guilty Friday to first-degree murder with a deadly weapon in connection with the stabbing death last October on Interstate 5 of his Kent girlfriend.
Christel David Murphy stabbed 42-year-old Jane Kariuki 31 times with a 4-inch dinner knife as the couple rode in a sport-utility vehicle driven by a relative of Kariuki last Oct. 16 southbound on I-5 in North Seattle, according to charging papers. Kariuki died later that evening from stab wounds to the chest at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.
According to charging papers, Murphy has a long history of domestic violence, including fourth-degree assault in 2007 and third-degree assault in 2006 against Kariuki at the Kent home they shared. Murphy also had a pending charge against him in Kent Municipal Court for violation of a no-contact order as well as a valid no-contact order against him in place at the time he stabbed Kariuki.
Murphy sat in the back seat of the SUV and stabbed Kariuki as she sat in the front passenger seat, according to charging papers. The driver pulled over to the side of the freeway during the attack and called 911. Murphy reportedly walked out of the car, threw the knife on the ground, leaned against a guardrail and lit a cigarette.
Washington State Patrol troopers arrested Murphy Oct. 16 on I-5 for investigation of murder. Police found the dinner knife on the pavement.
The King County Prosecutor’s Office plans to recommend a sentence of 32 years in prison, which is at the top end of the sentence range, wrote Dan Donohoe, spokesman for the prosecutor’s office, in a Friday e-mail.
Murphy is scheduled to be sentenced at 9 a.m. Nov. 13 at the King County Courthouse in Seattle before Superior Court Judge Palmer Robinson.
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