Evangelist found guilty in wife’s murder

MOBILE, Ala. (RNS) A part-time Alabama evangelist was found guilty on Friday (April 9) of murdering his wife in 2004 and stuffing her body in a freezer. After deliberating for just 90 minutes, jurors convicted Anthony Hopkins of murder, second-degree rape, second-degree sex abuse, second-degree sodomy and incest. Hopkins stared ahead with no visible emotion […]

MOBILE, Ala. (RNS) A part-time Alabama evangelist was found guilty on Friday (April 9) of murdering his wife in 2004 and stuffing her body in a freezer.

After deliberating for just 90 minutes, jurors convicted Anthony Hopkins of murder, second-degree rape, second-degree sex abuse, second-degree sodomy and incest.

Hopkins stared ahead with no visible emotion as the verdict was read.


“We have a number of children who have been harmed by this man, and the chances of them ever fully recovering are very slim,” Mobile County Assistant District Attorney Ashley Rich said outside the court.

Prosecutors argued that Hopkins murdered 36-year-old Arletha Hopkins in the midst of a fight in December 2004 after she learned he was sexually abusing his stepdaughter.

During the trial, that stepdaughter, now 21, said she helped Hopkins bury her mother’s body before transferring it to a freezer. The body was found by police in 2008 after the stepdaughter, the oldest of eight children, came forward to police.

Hopkins testified in his own defense, saying he found his wife dead in their house but was too scared to call police. Hopkins said he feared he would be a suspect in her death and would go to jail, and he didn’t want his children to be separated.

He said he asked his 16-year-old stepdaughter to help dispose of the body because it was “too heavy.”

“I felt bad doing it, but I didn’t want my wife to decompose,” Hopkins said. “I didn’t want her stinking. It was my wife.”

“I knew a freezer would preserve a body, at least until I came forward,” Hopkins said later.


The stepdaughter had testified that Hopkins jumped up and down on her mother’s body to squeeze it into the freezer. But Hopkins denied that.

He said his wife’s body “fit snuggly,” although “I did press the freezer down.”

Hopkins also denied sexually abusing his stepdaughter, although he said he did have sex with her in 2008, when she was 19. He said she approached him in the living room wearing a “chocolate negligee.”

“From that point, I was tempted and I yielded to the temptation,” Hopkins testified. “As a result, she got pregnant.”

Judge John Lockett scheduled the sentencing hearing for May 6.

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