She killed her grandmother and took her out with the trash. That's what Ellen Nicole Crawley told police when she was arrested for murder.
Mary McClain's body was found in a trash can inside her Okolona home on Judge Boulevard in August.
Crawley reenacted for police what she said happened on the August afternoon that she killed her grandmother. She told them she hit McClain with a frying pan.
"She started hitting me and I went to pick up something," Crawley said. "I picked up a skillet and hit her upside the head with it. She didn't move or nothing."
Crawley told police she left the skillet in the kitchen sink. It's one of the items police took for evidence.
After hitting her grandmother, Crawley said McClain started to get back up. "She threw her hands on me, and I threw my hands on her, and I just, I just went a little too far," Crawley explained to detectives. She went on to tell them she choked McClain while she was on the ground.
Crawley told police she climbed through a window at her grandmother's home that August day because she'd been locked out. Crawley had been staying with her grandmother for two months.
In the days leading up to her death, McClain left a message with her sister saying Crawley had locked her out of her own home, so she was kicking Crawley out.
"I had to call a locksmith to come in here and open the door and then change the locks on the deadbolts so that she cannot get in, and I'm not letting her in. I don't want her here anymore," McClain said in the message.
McClain's body was found two days after she was killed when her ex-husband came over. The body was in a trash can, the second place Crawley said she put her. The first was in the backseat of her car, wrapped up in a blanket.
"I went to the gas station and got me something to drink. I just needed to think, and then I came back home drove back in the garage and I went to sleep," Crawley said. "I left her in there cause I couldn't think. I didn't know what to do."
Crawley said after a few beers, she decided to move her grandmother to the trash.
Crawley also admitted to not only stealing her grandmother's jewelry, but selling some of it in the hours after McClain was killed. Because of that, the state is asking that Crawley be put to death if she's convicted.
