A Tucson woman is facing a life sentence with or without the possibility of parole after a Pima County jury convicted her Tuesday of first-degree murder in the stabbing death of her son.
Paramedics and Tucson police who were summoned to Della Lisa Vermeule's home in the 3300 block of North Geronimo Avenue in July 2008 found Vermeule and her son, Spencer Carbone, 31, suffering from stab wounds.
Carbone died at University Medical Center, and Vermeule, 50, was arrested upon her release from the hospital three days later and charged with first-degree murder.
On Friday, Vermeule told jurors that on the day her son died, she was under a lot of stress because she was ill and worried about family issues. She'd been to the hospital earlier that morning with a kidney ailment, but she decided to come home when she was told she would have to wait in the emergency room for eight to nine hours.
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When she got home, Vermeule testified that her son "started getting on her," asking her for money.
They began to argue, and in the middle of the argument, she saw a butcher knife on her son's bedroom entertainment center, Vermeule said.
"I spotted it. He spotted it and we both reached for it," Vermeule testified. "We had a struggle over it. I didn't know if he was going to do me or do harm to himself."
Vermeule told her attorney, county Assistant Public Defender John Sando, that she couldn't remember who got the knife first, but her son was the last one holding the knife.
Once she realized he'd been cut on the arm, she pleaded with him to stop, but he kept backing her up toward the bathroom door, Vermeule said.
Some point after realizing she, too, had been stabbed, Vermeule said her son must have discovered he'd been stabbed in the side, because he went into the living room and collapsed into a chair.
Her son asked her to hold him, and she obliged, Vermeule testified. She applied pressure to his wound and rocked him while a friend called 911.
Vermeule said she vaguely remembers going to the hospital and into the operating room.
When she regained consciousness, she was shackled to a bed and had a police officer standing guard over her, Vermeule said.
She was told her appendix had been removed, her spleen ruptured and her colon had to be reconstructed.
During Deputy County Attorney Nicol Green's cross-examination, Vermeule denied telling police that her son came out of a bathroom wielding the knife at her. She also denied saying her son was trying to harm himself.
Vermeule further denied telling police that one of her friends could have stabbed her son or that she could have stabbed herself.
The defendant also adamantly denied exclaiming "You (expletive) drove me to it" after her son collapsed, as one of her friends had testified.
Vermeule will be sentenced next month by in Pima County Superior Court by Judge Paul Tang.
