Man executed pregnant girlfriend a month after hosting ‘joyful gender reveal party’ with gun she helped purchase

Maurice Kelso Smith (Tarrant County Sheriff

Maurice Kelso Smith (Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office) and Darionne Burley (Gregory W. Spencer Funeral Directors)

A 32-year-old man in Texas will spend the remainder of his days behind bars for killing his 26-year-old pregnant girlfriend, shooting her in the back of the head only a few weeks after the couple held a gender reveal party for their soon-to-be twin boys, both of whom also died as a result of the shooting, records reviewed by Law&Crime show.

District Court Judge Robert P. Brotherton on Monday ordered Maurice Kelso Smith to serve a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole for the 2020 slayings of Darionne Burley and the unborn kids.

The sentence was formally handed down after a jury in Tarrant County found Smith guilty of capital murder in the fatal shooting. In capital murder cases where the state chooses not to pursue the death penalty, defendants convicted serve a mandatory life sentence without parole.

According to a report from Fort Worth, Texas, CBS affiliate KTVT, officers with the Mansfield Police Department on June 29, 2020, responded to a call regarding a woman who had been carjacked at gunpoint in the 1600 block of the North U.S. Highway 287 frontage road. The victim told the emergency dispatcher that the carjacker — later identified as Smith — had arrived in a different car, abandoned it, and then taken her car.

First responders made contact with the carjacking victim and then located the Honda Civic Smith had been driving before stealing the other woman’s car. Inside the Civic, police said they found Burley, who appeared to have suffered a gunshot wound to the back of her head, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

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