Original article no longer available
The Shelby Star
Kevin Ellis
December 13, 2007 – 9:49AM
The wife of a former star athlete from Cherryville faces a murder charge in Gwinnett County, Ga., in the stabbing death of her husband, Kent Alexander.
Gwinnett County Police arrested Laurie Alexander on the murder charge Wednesday night, according to the Gwinnett County Magistrate’s Office. She remains in the Gwinnett County Detention Center without bond.
Kent Alexander, 44, died Saturday morning from a single stab wound to the upper torso of his body, Gwinnett County Police Sgt. Chris Smith said Wednesday. Other details in the case were not immediately available.
Laurie Alexander and Kent Alexander were apparently alone in their home Friday night when they had an argument, according to a police report. Laurie Alexander would call police to their home in Dacula around 11 a.m. Saturday, telling them that she had discovered her husband’s body. She told police at the time that after they had argued that they had gone to separate bedrooms to sleep, which she told police was not uncommon.
Police described Laurie Alexander as emotional, questioning whether her husband was dead and requesting anti-depressant medication at the time, according to the incident report.
Police had labeled the incident an open death investigation through Tuesday, saying they were awaiting an autopsy report to determine if Alexander had died of a homicide or self-inflicted wound.
Kent Alexander worked as a medical recruiter for Jackson Coker of Atlanta.
He was a three-sport star at Cherryville High in the early 1980s, and a star on the Cherryville Post 100 American Legion baseball team.
He led the Ironmen to a pair of state titles in baseball as a pitcher and was the school’s first 1,000-yard single-season passer as a football quarterback before graduating from Cherryville High School in 1982. He also played basketball.
After high school, Alexander attended Appalachian State on a baseball scholarship.
Funeral services for Kent Alexander took place Wednesday in Cherryville.
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Mistress testifies in murder trial
Gwinnett Daily Post
By Josh Green
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
LAWRENCEVILLE — Murder suspect Laurie Alexander became privy to her husband’s prolonged infidelities when she ripped a cell phone from his hands, locked herself in a bathroom and trolled the phone for telltale correspondences, a family friend testified she’d told him.
Her husband, Ronald “Kent” Alexander, 44, was found fatally stabbed the next day.
Brian Rogers, who worked with Kent at a physician recruitment company, told jurors Wednesday he’d reached out to Laurie in the hours after her husband’s death, offering her the services of his pastor.
Rogers said she claimed to have taken two pills of Xanax, an anti-anxiety medication, and gone to bed after viewing the text messages and arguing with her husband. She awoke to find a disheveled kitchen and, on the floor, her husband with a “small stab wound … that couldn’t be what killed him,” Rogers said he was told.
The following week, Laurie was barred from her husband’s funeral, Rogers said.
Prosecutors believe the text messages sent Laurie into a rage that ended in murder. Her defense attorney, Jeff Sliz, claims she was heavily medicated and doesn’t know how her husband died, only that she had no part in it.
She faces counts of murder, felony murder, aggravated assault and weapons possession.
Rogers said the victim was hired three years prior to his death, and was a “top salesman” until “his performance sort of waned the last year he was with the company.”
Clients complained that Kent reeked of alcohol, Rogers said. He was fired about two weeks prior to his death for showing up to work with a blood alcohol level of .172 — more than twice the legal limit for driving in Georgia — according to a blood test the company mandated, Rogers testified.
That description bore contrast to the man who was something of a local hero in his native Cherryville, N.C., his mistress, Valerie Coles, testified. Kent was a star athlete who had played minor league baseball.
Sliz submitted into evidence an e-mail chain between Coles and Kent from September 2007, in which they referred to each other as “ironman” and “ironwoman.” The affair between the former co-workers had lasted 10 years, with the latter years turning sexual, Sliz said.
“He talked about how happy he was with me,” said Coles, who also was hiding the fling from her spouse.
After discovering the text messages, Laurie called Coles at home and threatened to “expose” her but didn’t threaten physical harm, Coles testified.
“I didn’t assume she was going to stab him,” Coles said. “I didn’t assume it was going to get that ugly.”
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