Murder count filed in stabbing of wife

Victim dragged from workplace, slain

A Mountain Home man was charged Tuesday with capital murder in the March 13 stabbing death of his estranged wife.

Rick Allen Headley, 43, went to a store in Mountain Home where Kirstie Headley worked, according to a probable-cause affidavit filed in Baxter County Circuit Court.

Rick Headley grabbed his wife and dragged her outside the store, according to the affidavit from Jay Volkman of the Mountain Home Police Department.

"Video surveillance captures Headley with a knife in his right hand while using his left hand to drag Kirstie outside," Volkman wrote. "The employee inside the store stated she watched through the window as Headley stabbed Kirstie several times."

About 45 seconds later, Kirstie Headley walked back into the store, covered in blood and clutching her chest, according to the affidavit.

Emergency personnel arrived and transported Kirstie Headley to a hospital, where she died shortly afterward, Volkman wrote.

Rick Headley told police he went to the store to kill his wife, according to the affidavit.

Besides capital murder, he also was charged with false imprisonment, terroristic threatening, aggravated assault, violation of a protection order and criminal trespass.

Rick Headley is being held in the Baxter County jail with no bond set.

According to a Nov. 6 affidavit from Kirstie Headley accompanying her petition for a protection order, Rick Headley had become "obsessed and controlling" after she attempted to separate from him.

"On or about Oct. 25, 2017, Rick became aggressive and grabbed me by my throat and pulled a knife on me that he had hidden under a shirt in the bedroom floor," she wrote.

In a similar document filed Jan. 2, Kirstie Headley wrote that Rick Headley kept breaking into her house while she was at work.

"Sometime in November, he pulled a knife on me a second time, then stabbed me in my left hip," she wrote. "He prevented me from calling police. Recently, he has been sending me threatening texts."

The protection order was in effect until Feb. 23, 2019.

NW News on 03/23/2018

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