Mickelson To Mother: 'That Is Not The First Person I Killed'

MORE INFO Video: Mickelson To Mother: 'That Is Not The First Person I Killed'

  In a phone call from jail, accused murderer Eric Mickelson told his mother he had murdered and dismembered an 86-year-old man and was ready to die for what he did.

  "I killed a man; I took him apart and I put him together and admit to doing it," Mickelson said in the phone call from Caddo Correctional Center shortly after his 2007 arrest. Calls from inmates are routinely recorded.

 Prosecutors want to use that conversation during Mickelson's death-penalty trial, which is scheduled to begin Oct. 18 in Caddo District Court.

  Mickelson, 41, is charged with killing retired painting contractor Charles Martin of Shreveport, who was strangled at his home before his body was dismembered and dumped.

  He is also suspected of killing Kristi O'Pry, a 26-year-old Caddo Parish woman who disappeared 14 years ago. Her body hasn't been found and he's not being prosecuted for her death.

  There is no direct mention of O'Pry in Mickelson's phone conversation, although he told his mother, "That (Martin) is not the first person I killed, mom."

  He expressed remorse at one point during the 15-minute conversation -- "What's upset me, the fact that I killed this dude" -- but later told his mother, "I took a man apart. Big deal. And they would have never put him back together if I wouldn't have showed them where he was."

  The conversation between mother and son had its moments of poignancy as she told Mickelson  that she loved him and had hoped he would have straightened out his life, which was marred by arrests and drug abuse.

 Told by his mother it would be hard to give him up, Mickelson said, "It's a little late, mom. The minute I took this man's head and wrung his neck, you gave me up." 

 Mickelson has admitted to law officers that he killed both Martin and O'Pry, prosecutors say.

  "I just decided to expose it all," he told his mother. "I'm through; I'm tired; I don't want to go through all this. I don't want to spend the rest of my life in a box; I really don't care. I would just as soon they would go ahead and stick me and push the plunger or pull the trigger."

 Caddo District Judge Ramona Emanuel has ruled that the jury can hear about O'Pry's disappearance if Mickelson's trial gets to the penalty phase where jurors decide whether he should be sentenced to die or serve life in prison for Martin's murder. That ruling is being appealed by the defense.

 Mickelson's former girlfriend, Beverly Arthur, is also charged in Martin's murder. She will be tried later. She and Mickelson have pleaded not guilty.