Left: Erik Watkins (Luzerne County). Right: Patrica Watkins (Obituary).
A Pennsylvania man will be spending the next several years — and possibly the next several decades — behind bars for beating his mother to death so badly that she was hardly recognizable.
Erik Watkins, 42, pleaded guilty to one count of criminal homicide in the third degree. Pennsylvania is one of only three U.S. jurisdictions where a third-degree murder statute remains on the books.
The plea comes after several years of legal wrangling. The defendant was initially quite forthcoming about what he had done to his own mother — but had pleaded not guilty. On Tuesday, immediately after entering his changed plea, Watkins was sentenced to 15-40 years in prison.
The incident occurred on Dec. 13, 2020, at a house on Maffett Street in Sugar Notch — a tiny borough and southern suburb of Wilkes-Barre.
At around 2 a.m. on the night in question, Pennsylvania State Police troopers responded to a domestic dispute. There, Patricia Watkins, 60, was found dead at the scene of the crime.
The victim was beaten to death, found left to die in a bathtub, and suffering from multiple injuries including broken bones in her face, neck and ribs. Her face, in particular, was pummeled so badly it had “caved in,” investigators wrote in a criminal complaint obtained by the Times Leader and Scranton-based CBS affiliate WYOU.
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“I know who you are and I know what you want” the killer son shouted at arriving state troopers. “She is dead, my mom is dead, I killed her.”
On the night of the murder, Watkins and his stepbrother came to blows after the since-condemned man started beating his mother on a couch, according to the complaint. At some point, the stepbrother and the victim barricaded themselves in a bathroom. Then, the stepbrother escaped through a window to go and get help.
By the time he returned, the woman was dead.
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During a subsequent interview with law enforcement, Watkins revealed that he had only just recently moved back in with his mother.
Earlier that same day, Watkins said, he smoked marijuana, fell asleep, then began “hearing voices” from a “higher power” about the need for intrafamily violence. These distortions of reality included some apparent communication with a dog, according to his defense attorney, in a courtroom report by The Citizens’ Voice.
A defense motion to suppress those incriminating statements was denied during a pretrial hearing earlier this year.
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Watkins, at one point, looked intent on taking the case to trial and previously considered an expert report integral to his defense. A trial slated for December 2023 was eventually pushed back to this fall.
In November 2023, after Watkins lodged a handwritten complaint, his defense attorney attempted to withdraw from the case. That request was denied by Luzerne County President Judge Michael T. Vough, the Leader reports. Watkins apparently changed his mind and said his lawyer was doing fine. Vough issued the sentence on Tuesday.
The defendant issued an apology through tears during his sentencing hearing, according to a courtroom report by the Voice.
“I would like to start by saying I am sorry to my family,” Watkins said. “I’m extremely remorseful. No words can define how terrible I feel. I loved my mother. I love my family and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I was suffering from substance abuse disorder and mental health. I took what I though to be Xanax and it sent me into a whirlwind, made me hallucinate, have delusions, things that I cannot describe. I have lost everything because of drugs. Words cannot describe how bad I feel.”
The deceased woman’s other son also spoke aloud during the hearing.
“Mom didn’t deserve to die like that,” he said, crying as well. “She lost everyone and only had us. She would do anything she could for us. … She just wanted us to have a good life.”
Watkins will receive credit for 1,361 days served in pretrial detention.
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