His kids told mom bye — then waited outside Lakebottom apartment as he killed her, prosecutor says

Jarod Ingram stabbed his ex-wife three times in the neck with a butcher knife in her Lakebottom-area apartment while their two children waited for him outside, a prosecutor told jurors this week during Ingram’s murder trial in the death of 28-year-old Ciara Ingram.

The two children, a boy who was 8 and a girl who was 6 when their mother was slain in June 2012, took the witness stand Thursday to recount what they could recall.

They last saw their mother the evening of June 2, 2012, in her home at Apt. 206 of The Village on Cherokee, 3113 Cherokee Ave., where the children lived during the school year. They stayed with their father in Harris County over the summer.

The school year had just ended, and he had come to pick them up.

But he did not just get them and leave, they testified: They said goodbye to their mother, inside the apartment, and he told them to wait outside in the car.

Exactly how long they waited wasn’t clear, but it was long enough for them to get bored, get out of the car and play.

The boy, now 13, said he recalled “saying goodbye to my mother and getting into my Dad’s car.”

How long did he wait?

“I don’t know exactly, but a long time,” he said.

What did he hear while he was outside?

“We could hear a little bit of screaming and laughing,” he said. “It was coming from upstairs.”

He described it as “screaming then laughing, on and on, mostly screaming,” and said the screaming eventually died out.

He said he stepped inside the apartment door, saw someone’s shadow, and ran back to the car.

Assistant District Attorney Wesley Lambertus asked whether he truly could not recall more details, or just didn’t want to.

“I just really don’t remember,” he said.

His little sister is 12 now. She remembered more.

What was her last memory of her mother?

“Saying goodbye to her and walking out of the house,” she said.

She said her mother seemed “happy as usual” and her father looked “maybe a little antsy.”

How long did she wait outside?

“Maybe 20 to 30 minutes or so,” she said.

Twice she peered through a mail slot into her mother’s apartment. The first time she saw nothing. The second time she saw her father, putting on a shirt, a white bottle of cleaner nearby, she said. He saw her and waved for her to go away, she said, so she went back to the car.

Eight to 10 minutes later, he came out and drove them to his home in Harris County, she said.

“There was kind of a weird smell,” she said. Asked where it came from, she said, “From him.”

Six days dead

On the afternoon of June 8, 2012, property managers at the Cherokee Avenue apartment complex were to conduct a final inspection of Apt. 206, before Ciara Ingram moved out.

She was moving home to Indiana, and the kids she shared with Ingram were to join her there, for the next school year. A son, 10, already had moved, to live with her mother. Her apartment was cluttered with boxes being packed.

The first thing maintenance workers discovered was the apartment’s air conditioner had frozen and locked. They noticed an odd smell but thought that might be a clogged toilet on the ground floor.

When finally they went inside, one went upstairs, and came running back, shouting “Call 911!”

When emergency medical services summoned police at 2:25 p.m. that day, officers walked into a chaotic scene.

The air conditioner had locked up because the thermostat was turned down all the way. Besides the clutter of someone moving away, they found furniture cushions slashed with a blade, cabinets open, drawers pulled out, cleaning products on the kitchen floor, and Ciara Ingram’s body in her upstairs bedroom, by a pool of blood and a white bottle of Clorox bleach, with its blue lid nearby.

Some bleach had been poured on the body, fading the woman’s blue jogging suit. Some had been poured on the arm of a sofa downstairs, fading the carpet underneath, and some was on a green cloth by the kitchen sink, in which lay the butcher knife with the victim’s blood on it.

The stab wound that killed her was to the back of her neck, penetrating her spine, Lambertus said.

On the floor downstairs, police found her Verizon cell phone, which she had not used since the evening her ex-husband picked up his kids. The phone’s screen had Jarod Ingram’s left thumbprint on it.

The defense

Defense attorney Michael Reynolds said his client’s print was on the phone because he and his ex-wife had passed it back and forth as she spoke with her oldest son and other family in Indiana.

Reynolds said she called Indiana at 6:19 p.m., but got no answer. She called again at 6:35, and they talked for about five minutes, until 6:39.

At 6:44 p.m., the signal from Jarod Ingram’s phone hit a tower in the Lakebottom area, and at 7:08 it connected to a tower in Harris County.

He could not have committed murder and caused so much damage in the apartment so quickly, Reynolds said.

Police found a man’s watch wrapped up in the bedclothes, and the watch had a DNA profile on it that remains unmatched, the attorney said.

The couple had no conflict at the time, and Ciara Ingram so trusted her ex that he kept a key to her apartment when she needed him to babysit, Reynolds said.

“She fought for her life, we expect the evidence to show,” he said, but officers examining her ex-husband found no significant scratches or other marks to indicate he’d been in a fight.

Among the first witnesses in the trial was Ciara Ingram’s mother, Sue Barrett, who now has custody of the children. She said the two were in dispute over his owing thousands in child support.

All Ciara Ingram did was work long shifts as a nurse and care for her children, the mother said when asked whether her daughter had been dating anyone:

“Not that I’m aware of, because Ciara was all about the kids, the kids and work.”

Ingram is being tried on charges of malice or deliberate murder, felony murder for killing someone in the commission of a felony, aggravated assault and using a knife to commit a crime.

The trial resumes Friday in Judge Arthur Smith III’s court.

This story was originally published May 3, 2018 at 7:27 PM with the headline "His kids told mom bye — then waited outside Lakebottom apartment as he killed her, prosecutor says."