Woman stabbed to death by husband previously convicted of murder

A 50-year-old man accused of murdering his wife spent more than a decade behind bars for murdering his first wife. 

Tony Degrafreed allegedly beat and stabbed to death 47-year-old Rebecca Degrafreed in the bedroom of their Indianapolis home about 8am Sunday.

He then allegedly stabbed his wife’s son, 19-year-old Jordan Yarbro, in the chest.

Family members said Rebecca married Tony in 2006 after he’d been released from prison for killing his first wife. But the mother-of-three accepted his past and devoted herself to his rehabilitation.

‘He was my sister’s first love,’ Christopher Birdsong, Rebecca Degrafreed’s brother, told The Indianapolis Star.

‘She put her name on his parole papers in order for him to get out. She married him and took him home and had a home already well fixed for him.’

Birdsong said Tony connected with Rebecca, who’d met as teenagers, as soon as he left prison. The IU Methodist Hospital worker helped him find a job and ‘picked him back up.’

It’s this generosity of spirit and kindness that Rebecca Degrafreed’s loved ones will remember most.

‘She was the foundation of her family,’ family friend Lynn Howard told WTHR.

‘Today she would’ve been picking her mom up and taking her to church.’

Rebecca’s son, Jeffery Yarbro, said his mother pushed everyone to be their best and taught her children that family came first.

‘She was taken from us. You know it would be a completely different story if it was natural causes or it was a slip and fall, but she was taken from us,’ he told WISHTV.com.

Rebecca’s son, Jordan Yarbro, told police he heard thumping noises coming from his parents’ bedroom on Sunday.

When he knocked on the door, Tony stabbed the teen in the chest before fleeing.

He was arrested near the intersection of North Arlington Avenue and Devington Road, not far from his home.

Rebecca was found dead on the bedroom floor with head trauma. Jordan Yarbro was not seriously injured.

In January 1994, Tony Degrafreed was arrested and charged with murder, two counts of attempted murder and illegal possession of a handgun, the The Indianapolis News reported.

According to news reports at the time, he shot his estranged 26-year-old wife, Stacy Degrafreed, in the chest and thigh. She died in hospital.

Read more at The DailyMail Online.