Jetonne Whitehead told jurors Monday she was something of a caretaker for her brother Deon Perry.
She went to his Gary apartment at the Willows on Clark Road nearly daily or multiple times a day to help him with things like his laundry.
A diabetic, Perry was suffering from presumed complications. He was blind in one eye and had neuropathy in his feet. He struggled to walk sometimes and sleep.
On Feb. 4, she left. When she returned the next day, her brother’s roommate, Jeremy Worley, was gone.
She found her brother’s body face down in a bedroom with something “black” wrapped around or near his neck.
“I knew he was dead,” she told prosecutors.
Worley, 50, is charged May 14 with murder and a habitual offender enhancement in the Feb. 4 or Feb. 5, 2024 death of Perry, 60, of Gary.
He has denied the allegations and pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors played her 911 call.
On cross-examination, defense lawyer Derrick Julkes questioned what he called inconsistencies in Whitehead’s testimony.
Chief among them was what time she left the apartment. On Feb. 4, she said after looking at past testimony that she left at 11 p.m.
Jelks said surveillance video appeared to show she went back to the apartment four more times, the last time was well after 2 a.m.
Jelks asked if he could zero in on potential reasons for why Whitehead had an inconsistent memory for some details. Judge Samuel Cappas rejected the request.
Gary police responded Feb. 5, 2024 to the apartment on the 400 block of Clark Road.
Perry’s sister last saw him around 11 a.m. Feb. 4 when she picked up his laundry. When she called back at 7 p.m., his roommate “Jay” answered Perry’s phone, claimed he was asleep and “would take care of him.”
The woman told police the TV’s volume was turned way up in the background.
The next morning, at 8 a.m., when she called, no one answered. She went back to drop off the laundry. She found Perry’s body on the bedroom floor. A sledgehammer was nearby. The apartment was “ransacked.”
Security footage from the apartment building showed a man, later identified as Worley, going into the unit around 9:38 a.m. with a garbage bag and suitcase, the affidavit states
He was later seen throwing the garbage bag over a fence by 5th Avenue and Clark Road into a vacant lot. Police later found Perry’s pill bottle, a bloody bleach bottle and bloody medical pads.
Perry loved “fast cars,” singing, and was “somewhat of a ladies’ man,” according to his obituary. He “always had a smile on his face” and loved making people laugh.
He is survived by six children.
