A man transporting his wife’s severed head in a pickup truck crashed into an oncoming car, killing a woman and her 4-year-old daughter, police said. The impact sent the head flying onto the road.
A Boise police officer was driving behind Alofa Time’s truck on a busy road when he noticed the man’s erratic driving and then watched him slam into the car, police spokeswoman Lynn Hightower said.
Time, 51, who was not injured, told officers he was involved in his wife’s death, investigators said.
After searching Time’s house in Nampa, police found the decapitated body of 47-year-old Theresa N. Time in a car inside the garage, authorities said. She likely had been dead for several hours, Nampa Police Lt. LeRoy Forsman said.
An autopsy was scheduled next week to determine Theresa Time’s cause of death, Canyon County Coroner Vicki DeGeus-Morris said.
Time was being held on two counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of Samantha Nina Murphy, 36, of Boise, and her daughter Jae Lynne Grimes. Murphy’s other daughter was injured and was in stable condition at a Boise hospital.
“It was one of the more horrific and complex crime scenes on memory,” Hightower said. “A woman and her child killed in a crash, and a severed head from an earlier homicide: It’s nothing short of bizarre and tragic.”