CHEYENNE — A jury trial remains scheduled to start in less than two months for a 14-year-old charged as an adult with first-degree murder, accused of shooting his mother in the head after an argument over a stolen electronic tablet.
Laramie County Sheriff’s Office investigators say Havoc Leone admitted to shooting his mother, 41-year-old Theresa McIntosh, after she had called him “retarded” and a “thief” on March 6.
If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison. The death penalty isn’t an option in this case because of Leone’s age.
During his preliminary hearing, one of Leone’s attorneys outlined an alleged pattern of emotional abuse that may have driven the teen to act out.
Leone is an emotionally vulnerable child who had been subjected to a pattern of degrading treatment by a mentally ill mother, argued defense attorney Jonathan Foreman.
“If I called you ‘retarded,’ would you believe it?” Foreman asked Laramie County Sheriff’s Office Detective Miles DePrimo, who testified about the details of the case during the March 18 preliminary hearing.
Those details included Leone admitting to hating his mother and shooting her.
DePrimo answered, “No.”
“Would a child who had been hearing that his whole childhood start to question that?” Foreman followed up.
“Maybe,” the detective answered.
“Ms. McIntosh, who was mentally ill … regularly called him ‘retarded,’ pulled his hair,” and slapped him, said Foreman.
Conversely, Laramie County Assistant District Attorney Kelly Strickland argued that Leone expressed a long-simmering hatred for his mother, had thoughts about killing her, and then followed through when presented an opportunity.
“Right before pulling the trigger on the gun, Theresa yelled at him again if he was ‘retarded,’” Strickland said, recounting an interview Leone had with an investigator. “He said, ‘Yes mom,’ and pulled the trigger.”
Leone has pleaded not guilty to the first-degree murder charge, setting up a jury trial scheduled to begin Aug. 10.
The Argument
McIntosh was still alive when sheriff’s deputies arrived at their house, summoned by a 911 call from his father, who heard the shot while he was playing video games in the basement of their home, according to DePrimo’s court testimony and an affidavit of probable cause he wrote and filed in the case.
After Leone, his mother, and father argued about the electronic tablet he allegedly stole from a client of his mother’s cleaning business, they all went their separate ways in their three-level home just south of the Cheyenne city limits, according to DePrimo’s affidavit.
The father went into the basement to play video games, McIntosh was upstairs in Leone’s room doing a puzzle on the floor, while Leone was at the kitchen table doing homework.
At some point, Leone went up to his room where McIntosh was, and they began arguing again, DePrimo wrote.
A gun the teen stole from his mother’s car the week prior, a Taurus 9mm pistol, had been stashed in a boot in Leone’s closet, the detective wrote.
At one point during their argument, Leone went to the closet to retrieve a notebook that supposedly had a password to access the stolen tablet, the affidavit says. Leone also pulled the gun out of the boot and held it by his side to hide it from McIntosh.
With McIntosh sitting back on her knees on the floor, Leone told detectives that he tossed the notebook at her, which forced the woman to lean forward away from him, exposing the back of her head, DePrimo testified at the preliminary hearing.
“As she knelt forward, he revealed the gun and shot her,” he said, adding that being called “retarded” seemed to be a trigger for the teen.
“By tossing that notebook, he put her in a position to be shot in the back of the head?” Strickland asked, to which DePrimo answered in the affirmative.
McIntosh was shot once in the head behind her left ear, he added.
What Dad Heard And Saw
Leone’s father heard the gunshot from the basement and went upstairs to see what had happened. There, he encountered his son outside the bedroom, DePrimo wrote.
When he asked the teen what happened, the father told detectives Leone answered, “I don’t know, it just went off,” DePrimo said.
Leone himself at first told detectives that McIntosh had the gun and handed it to him, the detective testified. During that act, he said that “his finger slipped” and the gun fired.
Later, he told another detective the account involving getting the gun out of the boot.
Leone also said that “he had thought about killing Theresa then” at the time he stole the gun from his mother’s car, “but he didn’t,” DePrimo testified.
“He didn’t like to be called names and didn’t know how to express his anger and hatred to her,” he added.
When cross-examined by Foreman, DePrimo admitted that while Leone was asked about his negative feelings toward his mother, he wasn’t asked about the opposite.
“Did you ever ask him if he loved his mother?” Foreman asked. “Are you familiar with the term ‘love-hate relationship?’”
Foreman also explored the initial report to 911 by McIntosh’s common-law husband that she may have tried to kill herself.
“But the initial assumption by her husband was that she killed herself, is that right?” he asked, to which DePrimo answered he didn’t know.
Leone remains at the Laramie County Detention Center on a $500,000 bond.
Greg Johnson can be reached at greg@cowboystatedaily.com.
