When police couldn't find Lynna Flippen after her frantic early morning call for help, they immediately turned their attention to her ex-boyfriend, with whom she had a stormy relationship.
Troopers wanted to speak with Terrence Graham even hours before they discovered the bloody bodies of Ms. Flippen and Ernest Yarbough in an abandoned car on the side of a remote Washington County road.
A police affidavit filed in his arrest early Friday offered few new glimpses into the Thursday slayings, which drew cries of outrage from the victim's relatives and questions from investigators who said they were still trying to understand how the events unfolded, beginning with a 911 call early Thursday morning from Ms. Flippen that "someone had broken into her residence and wanted to do her harm."
"I can't even close my eyes because I can still see my son standing at home," said Mr. Yarbough's father, Ernest T. Yarbough Sr. "My boy did not deserve to die."
Ms. Flippen's call came at 4:50 a.m., said troopers, who arrived at 5 Spruce Street in Ellsworth 15 minutes later to find bloodstains on the stairs and street, but not Ms. Flippen.
They quickly learned that she had a "lengthy relationship" with Mr. Graham, 34, the father her 4-year-old son, Esau.
The troopers grew suspicious when they went to his Bentleyville home just before 7 a.m. to speak with him and found a pair of tennis shoes that looked mud-covered and wet. Mr. Graham, they wrote, told them he came home late and had been in bed.
Twenty minutes later, a passer-by discovered Ms. Flippen, 25, shot in the head in the back seat of Mr. Yarbough's white Pontiac Grand Am on Butsko Road near Route 917, about 6 1/2 miles from her home. Mr. Yarbough, 31, of Wilkinsburg, was stuffed in the trunk, also with a gunshot wound to the head.
Troopers returned to Mr. Graham's house after the discovery, but he was gone. A neighbor told them he had driven off toward a Sunoco gas station, carrying with him a duffel bag and a pair of tennis shoes.
He returned home at 8:15 a.m. and told troopers that he went to the gas station to buy Gatorade. But clerks there said he had not been in the store that morning.
Police later interviewed Erica Andrews, an acquaintance of Mr. Graham who told them he called her about 6:15 a.m., requesting a ride from Route 917, less than a mile from Butsko Road. She said that when she picked him up, he was wearing green tennis shoes.
She dropped him off at his house in Bentleyville, and said he came to her residence at 7:20 a.m., where she saw him place a pair of shoes in the garbage. After leaving, Mr. Graham then called her several times, asking if the garbage had been picked up, police said. The trash was collected, but police didn't say if the shoes have been recovered.
Troopers who searched Mr. Graham's home said they found a bloody green T-shirt and blood spatter.
Mr. Graham was later jailed on charges of homicide, abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence. Investigators who searched his home said they found several bags of marijuana and a digital scale, which resulted in drug charges.
Washington County District Attorney Steven Toprani on Friday called the quick arrest "remarkable," but said state troopers are still trying to establish a time line in the slayings and learn more about how the victims came to know each other. He wouldn't comment on their relationship but said investigators want to know more by Mr. Graham's Wednesday preliminary hearing.
Mr. Yarbough's father, too, wondered how his son, whom he repeatedly described as "a gentleman and a scholar" met Ms. Flippen.
Tired of driving a tractor-trailer for a living, the younger Mr. Yarbough worked "odd jobs" including occasionally as a jitney, and would offer rides to people in need, his father said. He wondered if his son was driving Ms. Flippen somewhere the morning of his death.
"My son had no enemies," Mr. Yarbough Sr. said. "[The gunman] wasn't his enemy because he didn't know my son."
Mr. Yarbough's short criminal record includes an arrest in November 2007 on charges of possession and possession with intent to deliver drugs. He was sentenced in 2008 to 30 days probation after he pleaded guilty to possession.
Ms. Flippen's cousin, Nakia Carter, said her cousin and Mr. Yarbough "were more like friends," who met in Pittsburgh, where Ms. Flippen moved to work after graduating from Bentworth High School. She worked at a nursing home and planned to go to nursing school. She was a devoted mother, Ms. Carter said, and a good friend.
Ms. Carter agreed to watch Esau Wednesday night so her cousin and Mr. Yarbough could go out. When his mother never returned, the boy started asking questions.
"He was staying with me during the whole time it happened," she said. "He was just asking about his mom. At the time I had him, no one had told him."
Esau is with Ms. Flippen's mother, Kathleen, Ms. Carter said.
Pittsburgh was also where Ms. Flippen met Mr. Graham when she was 19, according to Ms. Carter. It would be the start of a relationship marked by domestic squabbles, protection-from-abuse orders and a long-running custody battle for Esau.
In 2003, Allegheny County court records show, Mr. Graham pleaded guilty to simple assault, unlawful restraint, reckless endangerment and false imprisonment and was sentenced to three years of probation. Other details of that case were not available.
Attorney Komron Jon Maknoon, who is representing Mr. Graham in the killings, called evidence supporting the charges "circumstantial."
First Published: May 15, 2010, 8:00 a.m.
