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A Dallas man fatally shot his girlfriend at a cemetery last week, then confessed to his co-workers, police say.
Bobby Ray Harris, 67, faces a murder charge in the death of 65-year-old Linda Simmons.
Patrol officers were called about 4:45 a.m. Oct. 6 to perform a welfare check at Crown Hill Memorial Park, along Webb Chapel Road in northwest Dallas.
They found Simmons dead, with a gunshot wound to her forehead. A spent shell casing and a live round were on the ground nearby, police wrote in an arrest-warrant affidavit.
While detectives and crime-scene technicians were at the cemetery a little more than an hour later, two witnesses drove up in a Dallas sanitation truck and told officers that Harris had come to work and confessed to killing his girlfriend at that location, the affidavit says.
Harris was apprehended at the sanitation services building on Harry Hines Boulevard and taken to police headquarters for an interview.
He told police that he was driving Simmons to work at Parkland Memorial Hospital about 3 a.m. and that the two got into an argument about Simmons pulling a knife on him at their apartment the previous night, the affidavit says.
During the argument, Simmons pulled a gun from her purse and threatened to kill Harris, he reportedly told police. He said he jerked the steering wheel, causing Simmons to drop the gun, which he grabbed and put near his feet.
Harris drove to the cemetery, where Simmons got out of the vehicle and slammed the door and then he got out with the gun in his hand. He told officers that Simmons kept approaching him and trying to assault him, and he fired one shot at her, the affidavit says.
He then drove to the sanitation services building, where witnesses said he was crying and saying that he’d killed his “old lady,” according to the affidavit.
Harris remained in the Dallas County jail Tuesday. He faces an unrelated count of accident involving damage in addition to the murder charge, and his total bail is set at a little more than $1 million.
His attorney could not immediately be reached for comment.
Court records show that Harris was convicted of murder in 1983 and sentenced to 99 years in prison; he was paroled in 2015. Details about that case were not available.
Crown Hill Memorial Park is the cemetery where storied 1930s outlaw Bonnie Parker is buried.