Ex-girlfriend's confession may be key in murder trial

When Beverly Brown drove her 17-year-old daughter to the bus station in their hometown of Vancouver, Wash., in November 2003, she believed the girl was headed to Seattle to say goodbye to a girlfriend and would be back in time for Thanksgiving.

A week later, Kialani Brown and Demar Rhome, a 20-year-old man she recently had met on a telephone chat line, were in jail, suspected of killing another teenage girl and leaving her body in Seattle's Discovery Park.

Now it will be up to a jury to decide whether Rhome was the unwitting assistant in a murder plan hatched by his old girlfriend, or whether Rhome himself masterminded the crime, luring the two teenage girls into a volatile triangle and then intimidating one into stabbing the other to death.

Testimony in Rhome's trial began Tuesday in King County Superior Court. Several twists in the case are expected to make it a difficult one for jurors to sort through.

Originally, prosecutors believed Kialani Brown's explanation of events — that Rhome, whom she first met in person on her trip to Seattle, killed Lashonda Flynn, 17, of Seattle, and that she helped. After she was charged, she pleaded guilty as an adult to manslaughter and was sentenced to 8-½ years in prison. Brown maintained her story for more than two years.

But in January, just as Rhome's case was set to go to trial, Brown suddenly changed her story, confessing that she had stabbed Flynn to death. Prosecutors charged her with second-degree murder, and she pleaded guilty. Brown, who remains in prison, could face a sentence twice as long as she was initially given.

She is likely to be called today as a witness in Rhome's trial.

Brown's admission could hinder the prosecution's ability to win a conviction against Rhome for first-degree murder.

Representing himself

In another twist, Rhome, who has a history of mental-health problems, is representing himself in court, despite advice from the prosecutor, the judge and even some of the potential jurors. During jury selection Tuesday, one potential juror pleaded with Rhome to get a lawyer while he questioned her.

Because Rhome is defending himself, the trial is expected to last longer than if he were represented by an attorney. Some of his questions have rambled on for many minutes, and he frequently has been instructed or corrected on legal procedure by Judge Nicole MacInnes.

While Rhome sometimes has seemed to have a handle on the process and a strategy for his defense, at other times he has been incoherent or stumped by such things as the meaning of the word "narrative."

Rhome could serve 30 years if convicted.

Rhome and Brown were arrested Nov. 23, 2003, when Beverly Brown called the police after Rhome told her during a phone call that her daughter had killed someone. Police found blood, bloodied knives and other evidence in Rhome's apartment, where Rhome, Kialani Brown and Lashonda Flynn had been at the time Flynn was killed.

Manipulator?

Hugh Barber, King County senior deputy prosecuting attorney, Hugh Barber painted Rhome as a calculating manipulator who kept Brown under tight control.

"From the moment Kialani Brown arrived in Seattle, Demar Rhome began to move [her and Flynn] like chess pieces," he told the court. He "told Kialani when to kill Lashonda, how to kill Lashonda, and why to kill Lashonda, and then he sat back and watched as his work unfolded."

Barber said that Rhome pitted the two girls against each other, telling Brown that Flynn wanted to kill her 2-year-old son, who accompanied her to Seattle.

Beverly Brown testified Tuesday that during numerous phone conversations with her daughter the week Kialani Brown was in Seattle, she got the impression that her daughter wanted to come home but couldn't. She also said that Rhome told her over the phone that the two girls would have to fight over him.

During his opening statement, Rhome said that Brown and Flynn, who were practically strangers, got along well at times and fought at others, and that they had begun a sexual relationship with each other.

He told the jury that he had been drinking and smoking drugs the night of the slaying — and witnessed Brown stabbing Flynn but didn't intervene.

"I was so nervous I felt like I couldn't go over there and take the chance to get stabbed," he said.

"Lashonda fought for her life," he said. "I was just so out of it — it was my first time in history being involved in a murder case."

Rhome said Brown threatened to pin the crime on him unless he helped her dispose of Flynn's body.

"I am an accomplice," he said, "but not by free will. [Kialani Brown] knew how to work people's minds pretty good. I felt like a hostage."

Natalie Singer: 206-464-2704 or nsinger@seattletimes.com