Former Orleans Parish deputy convicted of murdering her estranged husband

Honore Estes, convicted of murdering her husband (Photo by Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office)
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on March 25, 2013 at 9:40 AM, updated March 25, 2013 at 2:21 PM
We started tussling. Then the gun went off. It was like seconds." Honore Estes, explaining how her husband was fatally shot.

A former Orleans Parish sheriff's deputy has been convicted of killing her estranged husband outside their former matrimonial home in Waggaman, using her alleged lover's 9 mm pistol to shoot him in the chest while they argued over her alleged infidelity in the driveway. Honore Estes, 26, who who was a deputy and lived in eastern New Orleans when she was arrested following the March 4, 2012, homicide, faces mandatory life in prison for her conviction Saturday morning of second-degree murder.

Estes, jailed since her arrest, denied she intentionally shot Nicholas Houston and claims that the semiautomatic pistol accidentally fired as they "tussled" outside the Daffodil Lane they once shared.

"Did you pull the trigger?" her attorney Jim Williams, who defended the case with Bobby Truitt, asked her Friday.

"Possible," she said. "I could have, sir."

Houston, 25, was shot in the upper chest and died in the driveway while their son was inside the home. Estes said the pistol belonged to Gerard Golden, a deputy whom she met while working as a corrections officer for the Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff's Office.

The prosecutors, Kellie Rish and Megan Gorman, alleged that Golden was Estes' lover, and that her relationship with him factored into the fight that led to the shooting.

Houston was upset "because you were cheating on him?" Rish asked Estes, who throughout her testimony swiveled and rocked nervously in the witness stand's chair.

"No, ma'am," Estes replied, describing Golden as "just friends."

The jury deliberated more than three hours before its verdict was announced at 12:20 a.m., Saturday. Judge Ellen Kovach of the 24th Judicial District Court is scheduled to sentence Estes on April 22.

Estes, who was raised in Gretna and attended West Jefferson public schools, said she met Houston in 2007, while they both worked at the Avondale shipyard. They married on April 4, 2009, but their relationship soured.

"He was controlling," she testified. "He was demanding. It was just his way or the highway."

The discord culminated one night in November 2011, when he grabbed her from the shower and "pushed me out the house, butt naked, with no clothes on," she testified. While she was locked out of the house, he packed a bag for her and threw that out the door, too, she said.

"That was my final straw," she testified. "I just left."

She moved to a Curran Boulevard apartment in eastern New Orleans, where Golden lived. She denied moving in with Golden.

On the day of the shooting, Estes testified that she and Golden went to Harrah's Casino in New Orleans. Golden left his pistol in the trunk of the 2004 BMW that Houston had given Estes, she testified.

Later that afternoon, she dropped off the son she had with Houston at the Waggaman home. She said she left Golden at the entrance to the subdivision, "out of the love and respect for my husband."

At the house, she said Houston pressed her for an answer to why she wouldn't answer her cell phone that day, and as she tried to leave, he snatched the keys from the ignition. Inside the house, she claimed he tried to choke her, and he took her cell phone and broke the cordless home phone when she tried to call for help.

She said she fled the home and ran down the street. "He was like, 'You want to leave?' I said, 'Yeah, I want to leave,'" she testified. She said he demanded she unlock the security lock on her cell phone so he could see her call history, alleging she was having an affair.

He then wanted to take back the BMW he had given her, she said. As she was retrieving her belongings from the car, she got Golden's pistol from the trunk to move it to another car. She said she was holding it by its grip, and her finger was not on the trigger

It was then, she said, that she claimed Houston wanted to take back the Louis Vuitton purse he had given her, which she held in her left hand.

"He jacked the purse," she testified. "He was like, 'I want my purse back, too.'"

She said that he "overpowered" her as he pulled at the purse. She grabbed for the purse with her right hand, in which she still held the pistol by its grip, she said, and he grabbed the gun.

"We started tussling," she testified. "Then the gun went off. It was like seconds."

The bullet struck Houston near his left armpit. "He was like, "Baby, I've been shot,'" she testified.

"I started screaming for help," yelling to a neighbor to call 911 while she stood over Houston. "'Bay, it's going to be all right. They're coming. They're coming,'" she said she told him.

He then stopped breathing. She said she ran inside to call 911. The jury heard a recording of the call, in which she said only that her husband had been shot.

Rish had Estes re-enact the fight in the courtroom, handing her the murder weapon while she played the role of Houston and Estes acted out what she did during the alleged struggle for the purse. During the re-enactment, the pistol's barrel was always pointed downward. Estes volunteered that during the pulling, the pistol must have pointed upward at some point to fire the bullet into Houston's chest.

Ten children who witnessed the altercation testified last week they did not see pushing and shoving before the shot was fired.

The Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office said Estes initially lied about how the shooting transpired, when she claimed the pistol was in her purse when it somehow fired. Pressed on why there was no hole in the purse, Estes then said the pistol fired as she waved it, a claim witnesses corroborated.

Estes told Sheriff's Office Detective Brett Beevers that after the shooting, she called 911 and then went to get her purse out of the car. Pressed by Rish on the contradiction with her testimony about "tussling" for the purse, Estes said the statement she gave Beevers was wrong.

"That's not what I meant," she testified.

The prosecutors provided testimony showing that Estes was proficient with firearms, to show she knew how to handle a pistol. She had received firearms training while working for the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office as a corrections officer, and as a peace officer for New Orleans' Recovery School District before she was hired by Sheriff Marlin Gusman's office to work in the Orleans Parish jail.

Estes acknowledged being proficient with firearms but denied intentionally killing Houston.

"Did you want to kill him?" Williams asked her.

"No sir," she replied.