Police recording: Broyhill remembered screaming on night of stabbings

Four days after authorities say Jonathan Broyhill stabbed his close friend, Jamie Kirk Hahn, in her north Raleigh home, he told investigators that he couldn't recall much about the evening and that he kept trying to figure out what might have prompted the attack on her and her husband.

Posted 4:16 p.m. Mar 9, 2015 — Updated 9:01 p.m. Mar 10, 2015

RALEIGH, N.C. — Four days after authorities say Jonathan Broyhill stabbed his close friend, Jamie Kirk Hahn, in her north Raleigh home, he told investigators that he couldn't recall much about the evening and that he kept trying to figure out what might have prompted the attack on her and her husband.

FULL VIDEO: Jonathan Broyhill murder trial

"I remember her looking at me and screaming," Broyhill, 33, in a soft-spoken voice told two police investigators in an April 26, 2013, audio recording that jurors heard Monday in his first-degree murder trial. "That's all I remember. That's all I remember."

But he insisted to detectives Zeke Morse and Dexter Gill that the stabbings had nothing to do with him embezzling thousands of dollars from a U.S. congressional candidate's campaign bank account.

Broyhill, who had worked for Hahn's political fundraising firm, handled the finances for the campaign and he admitted to writing himself checks totaling thousands of dollars.

"To be honest with you, sir, I've honestly given that a lot of thought, and if it was just that, I would have faced (the embezzlement), and I would have faced the consequences," Broyhill said in the hour-long interview from a hospital bed.

After the attacks, he slit his wrists and plunged the knife in his stomach, defense attorneys have said.

"I would never in a million years have ever hurt Jamie over that. I honestly feel like I would literally just face it and deal with it without hurting her," Broyhill added.

A motive he suggested for the attacks – the basis of his defense – was depression. He talked about thoughts of suicide, how he planned and then canceled a trip to Las Vegas in which he planned to kill himself and how, when he was having a "down day" and "not thinking clearly," he bought a knife from Harris Teeter and carried around in his backpack for two or three weeks.

The state contends he used the knife on the afternoon of April 22, 2013, to attack Hahn and then used it on her husband, Nation Hahn, when he, responding to his wife's screams, walked in, giving her a chance to flee Broyhill.

She made it to a neighbor's front yard, where she collapsed. She died from her injuries two days later.

Dr. Lauren Scott, a forensic pathologist for the North Carolina Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, testified of numerous wounds to the 29-year-old Hahn, including stab wounds that penetrated her liver and lung and severed an artery.

"I saw multiple sharp force injuries on her body," Scott said. "There was a total of four stab wounds … and there were also several incised wounds."

Suggest A Correction