May 7, 1999

BROOKLYN MAN CONVICTED IN MURDER OF GIRLFRIEND'S MOTHER IN 1994

Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown today announced the conviction of a Brooklyn man, five years to the day after he murdered Emma "Momma" Mears, who was beloved throughout her St.Albans neighborhood, on May 6, 1994.

District Attorney Brown said, "The defendant, Francois-Pierre Louis, also known as Darrel Butts, murdered a woman who had befriended him and whose kindness was known throughout her community. He did it to further his own twisted goals. He is now deservedly facing a sentence of 25 years to life."

Francois-Pierre Louis, 39, who had lived for a year prior to the murder at the J-CAP drug treatment facility, 177-33 Baisley Boulevard, was convicted of murder in the second degree after a jury trial before State Supreme Court Justice Mark Spires. Judge Spires will sentence the defendant on June 15th. He faces a maximum penalty of 25 years to life in prison.

According to the trial testimony, on May 6, 1994 the defendant told his former girlfriend that he had been having bad dreams - dreams of her home surrounded by ambulances, police cars, flashing lights and yellow crime scene tape. He asked her if she would blame him if something bad happened to her mother. The woman, who was trying to ignore his overtures to get back together, brushed off his lurid remarks. As she walked home later that day planning what to get her mother to celebrate Mother's Day the following week, she found herself in the scene that the defendant had told her about that morning. Her mother had been killed, stabbed and hit with tools from her husband's tool bag which sat by the living room door.

District Attorney Brown said, "It was testified that the defendant, in prison on an unrelated robbery case, eventually told another inmate that he had murdered Emma Mears. This confession was buttressed by the testimony of a neighborhood grocery store owner that Butts had stopped that day by for a package of Mrs. Mears' favorite brand of cigarettes, a brand he stocked only for her."

Assistant District Attorney Robin Leopold, of District Attorney Brown's Homicide Trials Bureau, headed by Assistant District Attorney Daniel A. Saunders, was in charge of the prosecution.