Demar Rhome found guilty for talking teen into murder

For two weeks they sat in court — one family's daughter buried, the other in a jail cell — waiting for answers.

On Friday they got the one they hoped for: guilty.

A jury decided the man on trial talked one 17-year-old girl into killing another. Now Demar Rhome, convicted of first-degree murder, faces up to 30 years in prison.

The verdict proved what both families knew — that although only one is gone, in many ways both girls were victims.

Rhome, who acted as his own lawyer, tried to convince jurors he wasn't responsible for the stabbing of Lashonda Flynn, that a girl he had known for only a few days named Kialani Brown planned and carried out the November 2003 killing. He painted a violent tale of two love-struck teenagers willing to do anything to have him as their own.

In the end, he failed to convince jurors, who took about five hours to reach their verdict.

Sitting side by side for much of the trial, the loved ones of Flynn and Brown listened instead to the sad story of a cunning, controlling man and the two girls he played like chess pieces. A few weeks after meeting Rhome on a telephone chat line, Brown left her parents' home in Vancouver, Wash., to visit him in Seattle, where he lived with Flynn.

Rhome took the girls to restaurants and to the movies, and they had fun "hanging out" in his Central Area home. But soon, according to Brown, 20, and others who testified, Rhome began quietly telling Brown that Flynn was angry with her and wanted to kill her.

Rhome bought some knives and gave them to the girls. He told each one unflattering stories about the other. And, jurors were told, he suggested to Brown ways to commit a murder.

Less than a week later, Flynn was dead.

The trial, held in King County Superior Court, was gut-wrenching. While defending himself, Rhome, who has a history of mental illness, asked erratic questions and offered jurors confusing narratives. He shot insults at the prosecutor; he argued with the judge.

And then there was the crime itself, replayed in detail inside the courtroom.

One mother cried as she heard how her daughter's blood poured onto the floor.

The other mother wept as her own daughter, ashamed, demonstrated for jurors how she swung a knife.

Yet through it all, the two families remained polite, even, at times, cordial.

"There's no hate," said Olla Pinder, Flynn's grandmother, after the verdict. "I have to put in a prayer for [the Brown family] too. I wish Kialani would have had her eyes open a little bit wider, but she got caught up with this man, just like Lashonda."

"We hope this provides some sort of justice for Lashonda's family," said Shannon Coulter, Brown's aunt.

Brown initially claimed Rhome committed the murder himself, and she was convicted of the lesser crime of manslaughter. She later changed her story and confessed to stabbing Flynn. She faces up to 18 years in prison for second-degree murder.

Members of the jury said Rhome's decision to act as his own lawyer worked against him. "He had nine different versions of every story," said Corey Polsi, 24.

Throughout the trial, Rhome appeared confident, even as he described watching Flynn die. He bragged about his skills with women and his "articulate" self-defense. But Friday, as the jury walked in to deliver the verdict, Rhome suddenly turned toward Judge Nicole MacInnes and panicked.

"Your honor, I think they're going to find me guilty," he said, his eyes frozen wide.

The jurors took their seats, and did.

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