Wife arrested for murder of husband after funeral home employee spots stab wounds police missed

A woman has been arrested and charged with the murder of her husband who was originally thought to have died in a car accident after a funeral home employee discovered stab wounds.

The family of David Lokeith Worley, who died on July 19 in North Carolina, contacted Unity Funeral Home and voiced their suspicions about his death after they ruled he died as a result of injuries sustained in a car accident.



Both North Carolina Highway Patrol officers and county investigators missed the wounds while they were looking over his body for gunshot wounds.

When they arrived on the scene of the accident, they initially suspected him of being involved in an unrelated incident involving a man who fled from a crime scene after being fired at.

Wife: Toni Marsha Talley, 32, had been fighting right with her husband before his vehicle ran off the road and Mr Worley's family refused to accept he had died due to injuries sustained in the car crash

Victim: The family of David Lokeith Worley, who died on July 19 in North Carolina, contacted Unity Funeral home and voiced their suspicions about his death

The N.C. Highway Patrol said Worley was traveling toward Spring Lake when his vehicle ran off the left side of the road about 16 miles southwest of Lillington and hit a ditch culvert.

The patrol said Worley's vehicle, traveling about 90 mph, overturned several times, struck another ditch culvert and came to rest in its top.

Worley wasn't wearing a seat belt and was thrown from the vehicle, according to the patrol. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

He and his wife Toni Marsha Talley, 32, had been fighting right before his vehicle ran off the road and Mr Worley's family refused to accept that he had died due to injuries sustained in the car crash.

Unity Funeral Home employee Vernon Peterson found stab wounds on his back and alerted Harnett County investigators, according to WRAL.

The state Medical Examiner's office confirmed the findings the next day, saying in an affidavit that Worley was stabbed with an eight-inch butcher knife and that one of the wounds had punctured a lung.



The medical examiner's office said the stab wound was the cause of Worley's death, as it would have caused Worley to lose control of his motor skills within an hour, according to the affidavit.

After she was arrested, investigators noticed she was wearing gold nail polish that matched flecks found on a blood-soaked shirt recovered at the scene of the crash, WRAL.com reported.

