A Douglasville man was convicted on Wednesday of stabbing and beating his 16-year-old girlfriend to death after she confided she was pregnant and wanted to keep the baby.
It took a Cobb County jury about five hours of deliberation to find Matthew Frederick Wilkins, 20, guilty in the Jan. 19, 2008, slaying of Marlisa Wells.
Wells believed she was pregnant at the time of her death. However, an autopsy revealed that she was not.
Wilkins claimed that he was never at Wells' home the day of her murder. His cell phone records and a pair of blood-stained shoes police found concealed in his attic proved otherwise, said Assistant District Attorney Jesse Evans.
Prosecutors said Wilkins and Wells met secretly at her grandparents' home in Austell to discuss the unplanned pregnancy. The grandparents, Marvin and Charlotte Wells, were away at a funeral but said subsequently they disapproved of her dating and didn't know she had a boyfriend.
Prosecutors said Wilkins and Wells met while attending Christian Ministries Academy in Marietta. They stayed in touch after Wilkins graduated and enrolled at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Tifton, Ga., on a basketball scholarship.
"It was kind of a secretive relationship," Evans said. "There was another girl he was dating that he held out to be his girlfriend and Marlisa was with him on the side."
Upon learning that his high school girlfriend may be pregnant, Wilkins told several people he wasn't ready to be a father, Evans said.
At some point during their reunion, Wilkins cornered his girlfriend in a basement bathroom, where he stabbed her repeatedly, slammed her head into a toilet tank and drove a fork into her back.
Wilkins is expected to be sentenced next week.
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