Ashleigh Dye decided to use a shotgun to shoot her mother in the face and chest, then ransack the house to make it look like a robbery.

"I thought I was in love," she said in one of the court papers. "Turns out it was just my mind being manipulated by him."

Krueger suggested that Ashleigh Dye was carrying out her own fantasy by killing her mother and was implicating Chewning because she's upset with him.

The other key evidence presented against Chewning is a series of text messages he and Dye exchanged the day of the murder. Detective Michelle Gibbons was on the stand for more than three hours Thursday testifying about the messages and her interviews with Chewning.

Gibbons said Chewning acknowledged that he could have stopped Dye from killing her mother, but didn't.

When she asked Chewing why he didn't, he replied: "I felt the same way Ashleigh did and I was tired of hearing her [complain] every day."

In an interview with Gibbons that was played in court Thursday, Chewning said Brenda Dye treated her daughter "like a 5-year-old kid."

Chewning repeatedly said he did not understand why he was being charged.

He told Gibbons that the final straw occurred the day before the slaying, when Brenda Dye wanted to go to an Independence Day fireworks show with the couple.

Ashleigh Dye wanted to be alone with him, Chewning testified. After an argument, the mother decided not to go, he said.

The young couple spent much of the next day text messaging each other about a plan for Ashleigh to kill her mother, with Chewning at one point texting, "Stop talking about it and do it."

Chewning was at work in Northern Virginia with Ashleigh Dye's father and brother while text messaging with her.

Chewning said at one point in the interview that he did try to talk Dye out of it, but was unsuccessful.

"She didn't want her mom to control her anymore," he said.

Perhaps the most emotional evidence the jury heard yesterday came from a taped interview Detective Chris Cameron had with Ashleigh Dye.

After Ashleigh Dye confessed that she'd killed her mother, Cameron made her break the news to her father.

"I'm so sorry," a sobbing Dye said. "I shouldn't have done it. She didn't deserve this."

Keith Epps: 540/374-5404
Email: kepps@freelancestar.com