Trial starts for Dinwiddie mom accused in son’s slaying

A Dinwiddie County woman fatally stabbed her 6-year-old son after learning that her husband had left her and wouldn't agree to sign away his rights to their child, a prosecutor charged yesterday.

Although no clear motive was established yesterday in the Nov. 24, 2006, slaying of Shawn A. Futrell, prosecution witnesses testified that Julie E. Futrell was deeply distraught and scared after learning her husband had essentially moved out of their Dinwiddie home two days before Thanksgiving.

Devastated, she frantically called her estranged husband on the morning of Nov. 24, but Shawn Futrell Sr. told her he wasn't coming back. "She was trying to get me to sign over little Shawn to her," but he refused, the father testified.

Two days later, Dinwiddie deputies discovered little Shawn's naked body in a bathtub at the family's Dewitt-area home, his face covered with a pair of blue shorts. A state medical examiner determined he had been stabbed seven times in the chest--one blow puncturing his jugular vein -- sometime after being given seven times an adult dose of a sleeping medication.

"This would be a very profound sedation" that could have made the 57-pound boy comatose, said Dr. Leslie Edinboro of the Virginia Department of Forensic Science.

A Dinwiddie jury heard 12 prosecution witnesses yesterday in a trial that will last through today. The case has been delayed over the past two years because of issues related to Julie Futrell's mental competency.

Defense lawyer Joseph M. Teefey Jr. attempted unsuccessfully to have the case continued again yesterday for those same reasons. Although Futrell was initially determined to be mentally unfit to stand trial, her competency was deemed restored in August 2007 after she was sent to Central State Hospital.

At the outset of yesterday's trial, Futrell, 36, appeared to feign confusion and mental incoherence, but Circuit Judge Pamela S. Baskervill wasn't buying it, saying Futrell was deliberately being uncooperative during questioning from the judge.

Futrell periodically bobbed in her chair and dabbed her eyes with a tissue as prosecutors Nelson H.C. Fischer and Elsa Seidel laid out their case for premeditated murder.

After getting an anxious call from Julie Futrell's mother, who sensed that something was wrong with her daughter, Dinwiddie deputies made several efforts on Nov. 24 and 25 to check on the family, but the house was locked and no one was at home.

It wasn't until the morning of Nov. 26 that deputies finally entered after Shawn Futrell Sr. -- who was living elsewhere -- met them at the house and let them inside.

Deputy Steven Shifflett was the first to find the slain boy. He quietly gathered the father and the other deputies outside before telling them of his discovery. Futrell immediately slumped to his knees in anger and grief, Shifflett said.

"He was apple of his father's eye," Seidel told the jury.

Later that evening, police discovered that Julie Futrell had admitted herself Nov. 24 to the psychiatric ward of Southside Regional Medical Center in Petersburg, seeking treatment for depression. Her car was found parked in the lot.

After deputies confronted her at the hospital with warrants for her arrest, she had no response when advised her son had been found. She asked no questions about his death.

"She said she didn't remember what happened," Capt. William Knott testified. "She said she was scared. She said she loved little Shawn with all her heart."
Contact Mark Bowes at (804) 649-6450 or .