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or why he was being interrogated.
    “I just said to him that all I knew was that she was hurt bad,” the officer said.
    Heidi called Vernon’s cell phone during the interview, and Vernon handed the phone to the deputy, who told her that she needed to come on over from Georgia, and the officers who would be there at her mother’s home would explain to her what had happened when she arrived.
    During the course of the questioning, Vernon had been becoming increasingly agitated, and as the questions grew more personal, tempers began to flare.
    “What about another woman in your life?”
    “Never!” Vernon answered emphatically. “Never!”
    “Have you ever been in any trouble, or hit an ex-wife or anything?”
    Vernon said the only trouble he’d ever been in was a charge of driving under the influence years earlier in Texas, and he’d never hit any of his wives. He had earlier reported his first wife as being Janice Dunaway, the mother of his two daughters, and his second wife was Barbara Ann Comeaux, who lived near Atlanta, he said. He and Darlene had been married for about four years.
    “Who’s mad at your wife?” Lieutenant DeBerry asked.
    “Nobody,” Vernon replied.
    “Who’s mad at your wife?” DeBerry shouted.
    “Nobody!” Vernon shouted back.
    “Somebody was mad at her and knocked her in the head! Did you knock her in the head?”
    “No!” Vernon shouted. “I would never, ever hurt her, I cherished her with all my heart. We adored each other!”
    Vernon claimed he would never be unfaithful to Darlene, no matter what.
    “That’s what makes me think that something’s wrong,” Clifton said. “Something might have happened today between you and her that might have caused you so much anguish.... There’s no way, if you hurt this woman, that we’re not going to find out.”
    “I told you on the way over here,” Vernon said, “I worshiped that woman.” He told the officers to have his hands tested for gunshot residue for having shot a gun that day. He and the officers then argued at length about whether he would get jealous if somebody hugged his wife, with DeBerry asking repeatedly if it would make him mad if a coworker or friend hugged his wife in front of him.
    Vernon yelled, “My wife is injured and I’m sitting here listening to this ? This is crap! I love my wife!”
    Vernon was then asked if he’d found his wife with somebody else. He replied that Darlene had been taking antibiotics for a serious yeast infection.
    “Do you think she’d try to be with anybody else like that?” he asked the officers, infuriated by their questions.
    “There’s no two people on God’s earth that gets along all the time, never has a disagreement, never gets pissed with each other—it don’t happen,” DeBerry said. Vernon immediately disagreed, and said he and Darlene always got along.
    “Now, if she’s going to be okay and I ask her, will she say you never disagreed over anything? If there’s something you need to tell us, tonight’s the night. Extenuating circumstances could cause a man to do something he’d never do otherwise in a million years. We’re offering you a chance to tell us now. Right now the district attorney will take everything into consideration—tomorrow’ll be different. Right now, whoever hurt your wife is behind the event. They need to be out front of it.”
    Vernon talked again about his last call from Darlene when she called to see if he needed anything from Wal-Mart.
    “The last thing I told her was that I loved her,” he said.
    “Is that what you said right before you shot her, looked her in the eye and told her you loved her? You told me you never let her out of your sight, that’s what you said. Jealousy will eat you up. Now’s the time to help yourself—”
    “I told her that on the phone!” Vernon interrupted. “Look at the phone records! She called me on her cell phone from the Wal-Mart parking lot! I’m not worried about Darlene being unfaithful. I