Suburban Dallas man sentenced to 30 years for murdering wife

A retired ironworker who wanted to change the guilty plea for shooting his wife to death was sentenced to 30 years in prison Monday, July 28 by District Judge Mike Thomas in Criminal District Court No. 4. Freddie Willhite, 69, killed his wife at 7:30 in the evening at their home in the Dallas suburb of North Richland Hills on March 19 of last year.

Willhite claimed that his wife Donna, 66, had enticed and ridiculed him his whole life. During testimony in the punishment phase, Tarrant County Deputy Medical Examiner Lloyd White testified that Donna Willhite was shot at close range.

Their daughter, Mellisa Martinez, described her father as a violent drunk who tried to get her to move out of the couple’s shared home. She felt her father would be dangerous to both the community and her, and that Willhite had mailed the daughter a drawing of where her mother was shot.

Martinez had told relatives not to allow her father inside their home if he was drunk.
"On the Saturday before the incident, he called and left a message saying that mother had died," Martinez testified. "I quickly called her, and she said she was fine, but I found it very odd that he would do that."

On the evening of March 19, 2007, Freddie Willhite called his daughter, saying he was angry with Donna Willhite. "He kept saying, 'That’s it, that’s it,’ his daughter said Willhite said.

Willhite tried to change his plea July 16 because, in his own words, lawyer Scott Brown of Fort Worth, "told me I don’t have a chance [and] said that the jury would be mad for taking up their time with the case."

However, Judge Thomas said the defendant knew what he was doing. The prosecuting attorney was Tarrant County assistant district attorney Rebecca McIntire. Willhite can get out in 15 years with good behavior.