An Arkansas man has been accused of brutally murdering a mother’s two young children while she watched before he then killed her.
Jurors in a Little Rock, Arkansas, courtroom heard the gruesome details of the murders that prosecutors say were committed by 26-year-old Michael Collins in December of 2017, according to ArkansasOnline.
Collins stands accused of the stabbing deaths of Mariah Cunningham, 24, A’Layliah Fisher, 5, and Elijah Fisher, 4, in their Little Rock apartment. Police say that Collins brutally stabbed the woman’s children to death and decapitated them as their mother was forced to watch before she, too, was stabbed to death.
Investigators say that the murders occurred after Collins and his half-brother, William Burnell Alexander, 23, forced their way into Cunningham’s home to rob her, but when no money was found, Collins went on a rage-fueled murder spree.
All the pair got out of their horrid act was a TV and an X-Box video game set.
Police discovered the items in Collins’ broken-down Honda, which the killer had abandoned. Officers also found a large steak knife they identified as the murder weapon.
In the courtroom, prosecutors said that the children’s murders were “designed to cause the most unimaginable terror, all because she couldn’t give him what he wanted.”
Collins was arrested at his home five days after the brutal murders and found still wearing the blood-spattered gym shoes.
Prosecutors learned of the graphic details of the murders by testimony by a cellmate of the accused killer who told investigators that Collins confessed the whole thing to him.
The cellmate, Marino Bernard Scott, told authorities that Collins told him of what he did because he kept seeing his murder victims in his dreams.
Prosecutors have asked for the death penalty for Collins, and his half-brother will go on trial for his part of the crime in November.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.