Samurai swordsman guilty of murder

TAMPA -- A jury today found Willie Tarpley Jr. guilty of second degree murder for stabbing his estranged wife's boyfriend to death with a samurai sword.

He was acquitted of threatening his wife.

Tarpley, 47, was upset that she was dating a sex offender and letting him near their young daughters.

He will be sentenced April 23 and faces a maximum of life in prison.

Tarpley went to the Brandon home on May 12, 2007, they had once shared to air his concerns. But prosecutors alleged that he threatened Jacqueline Tarpley, the mother of his children, with the sword and then followed Lee Alexander to the garage with it.

After Alexander, 25, backed into Tarpley's Corvette, Tarpley stabbed him three times, prosecutor Jennifer Gabbard said during her closing argument this morning.

"He was fueled by the fact that everything in his life was changed or gone," Gabbard said of Tarpley.

But Assistant Public Defender Samantha Ward said Tarpley had gone to the home out of concern for his children, not because he intended to hurt anyone.

"Willie Tarpley didn't want Lee in his home or around his kids," she said.

She said the stabbing was an accident committed in the heat of passion and therefore is not a crime.

Willie and Jacqueline Tarpley are also both registered sex offenders. They both served prison sentences in the October 1987 sexual torture of a 21-year-old woman.

Gabbard said the sudden provocation came from Willie Tarpley alone.

"It's not a defense to this crime to say, 'I don't want you around my children,' " she said.

-- Colleen Jenkins, Times staff writer